Related papers: Sky subtraction at the Poisson limit with fibre-op…
A method for optimal reduction of data taken with multi-fiber spectrographs is described, based on global correction of their geometrical distortion. Though it was specifically developed for reducing observations performed at Palomar…
Cosmological weak lensing measurements rely on a precise measurement of the shear two-point correlation function (2PCF) along with a deep understanding of systematics that affect it. In this work, we demonstrate a general framework for…
The sky-averaged Compton-$y$ distortion in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) energy spectrum, $\langle y \rangle$, provides information about energy injection in the Universe occurring at $z \lesssim 5\times10^{4}$. It is primarily…
Atmospheric turbidity is one of the key factors influencing the propagation of artificial light into the environment during cloudless nights. High aerosol loading can reduce the visibility of astronomical objects, and thus information on…
We describe techniques concerning wavelength calibration and sky subtraction to maximise the scientific utility of data from tunable filter instruments. While we specifically address data from the Optical System for Imaging and low…
An experimental search for variation in the fundamental coupling constants is strongly motivated by modern high-energy physics theories. Comparison of quasar absorption line spectra with laboratory spectra provides a sensitive probe for…
In this paper we propose a blind deconvolution method which applies to data perturbed by Poisson noise. The objective function is a generalized Kullback-Leibler divergence, depending on both the unknown object and unknown point spread…
Ground-based observations at thermal infrared wavelengths suffer from large background radiation due to the sky, telescope and warm surfaces in the instrument. This significantly limits the sensitivity of ground-based observations at…
We investigate the dependence on length of optical fibres used in astronomy, especially the focal ratio degradation (FRD) which places constraints on the performance of fibre-fed spectrographs used for multiplexed spectroscopy. To this end…
Achieving a comprehensive understanding of the star and planet formation process is one of the fundamental tasks of astrophysics, requiring detailed knowledge of the physical conditions during the different phases of this process. During…
Over the last two decades the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) has been something of a test-bed for methods aimed at obtaining accurate time-domain relative photometry within highly crowded fields. Difference imaging methods, originally pioneered…
The LSST survey will provide unprecedented statistical power for measurements of dark energy. Consequently, controlling systematic uncertainties is becoming more important than ever. The LSST observing strategy will affect the statistical…
High-contrast imaging observations are fundamentally limited by the spatially and temporally correlated noise source called speckles. Suppression of speckle noise is the key goal of wavefront control and adaptive optics (AO), coronagraphy,…
The wavelength dependent refraction of light in the atmosphere causes the chromatic dispersion of a target on the focal plane of an instrument. This is known as atmospheric dispersion, with one of the consequences being wavelength dependent…
The Earth's atmospheric turbulence degrades the precision of ground-based astrometry. Here, we discuss these limitations and propose that, with proper treatment of systematics and by leveraging the many epochs available from the Korean…
Phase diversity is a widefield aberration correction method that uses multiple images to estimate the phase aberration at the pupil plane of an imaging system by solving an optimization problem. This estimated aberration can then be used to…
Many different methods exist for reducing data obtained when an astronomical source is studied with a two-channel polarimeter, such as a Wollaston prism system. This paper presents a rigorous method of reducing the data from raw aperture…
Detecting the angles and orbits of remote targets precisely has been playing crucial roles in astrophysical research. Due to the resolution limitations imposed by the Airy disk in a single telescope, optical interferometric schemes with at…
(abridged) Imaging observations are generally affected by a fluctuating background of speckles, a particular problem when detecting faint stellar companions at small angular separations. Knowing the distribution of the speckle intensities…
We present a reanalysis of the VIRMOS-Descart weak lensing data, with a particular focus on different corrections for the variation of the point spread function anisotropy (PSF) across the CCDs. We show that the small scale systematics can…