Related papers: PIONIER: a visitor instrument for the VLTI
ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer has a history of record-breaking discoveries in astrophysics and significant advances in instrumentation. The next leap forward is its new visitor instrument, called Asgard. It comprises four…
The Fringe Sensor Unit (FSU) is the central element of the Phase Referenced Imaging and Micro-arcsecond Astrometry (PRIMA) dual-feed facility and provides fringe sensing for all observation modes, comprising off-axis fringe tracking, phase…
We present the technology and control methods developed for the pointing system of the SPIDER experiment. SPIDER is a balloon-borne polarimeter designed to detect the imprint of primordial gravitational waves in the polarization of the…
The Very Large Telescope Interferometer is one of the most proficient observatories in the world for high angular resolution. Since its first observations, it has hosted several interferometric instruments operating in various bandwidths in…
The Primordial Inflation Polarization ExploreR (PIPER) is a balloon-borne telescope designed to measure the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background on large angular scales. PIPER will map 85% of the sky at 200, 270, 350, and 600 GHz…
We describe SPIDER, a balloon-borne instrument to map the polarization of the millimeter-wave sky with degree angular resolution. Spider consists of six monochromatic refracting telescopes, each illuminating a focal plane of large-format…
SPINOR is a new spectro-polarimeter that will serve as a facility instrument for the Dunn Solar Telescope at the National Solar Observatory. This instrument is capable of achromatic operation over a very broad range of wavelengths, from…
In the current era of Gaia and large, high signal to noise stellar spectroscopic surveys, there is an unmet need for a reliable library of fundamentally calibrated stellar effective temperatures based on accurate stellar diameters. Here we…
We present the first astronomical observations of the Livermore Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrograph for visible-band astronomy using the 3.5-meter Apache Point Observatory.
Pioneer is a single-crystal neutron diffractometer optimized for small-volume samples and weak signals at the Second Target Station (STS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This paper presents the preliminary optical design progress,…
SPHERE (Spectro Polarimetric High contrast Exoplanet REsearch), the planet finder instrument for the VLT is designed to study relatively bright extrasolar giant planets around young or nearby stars. SPHERE is a set of three instruments fed…
Visibility estimators and their performance are presented for use with the Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI). One operational mode of PTI is single-baseline visibility measurement using pathlength modulation with synchronous readout by a…
Context. The mechanism of disk formation around fast-rotating Be stars is not well understood. In particular, it is not clear which mechanisms operate, in addition to fast rotation, to produce the observed variable ejection of matter. The…
The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is a high-contrast imaging instrument designed to directly image and characterize exoplanets. GPI is currently undergoing several upgrades to improve performance. In this paper, we discuss the upgrades to the…
The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), a coronagraphic adaptive optics instrument designed for spectroscopy of extrasolar planets, had first light in 2013[13]. After five years, GPI has observed more than 500 stars, producing an extensive library…
The GRAVITY instrument has been commissioned on the VLTI during 2016 and is now available to the astronomical community. It is the first optical interferometer capable of observing sources as faint as magnitude 19 in K-band. This is…
PILOT (the Pathfinder for an International Large Optical Telescope) is a proposed 2.5 m optical/infrared telescope to be located at Dome C on the Antarctic plateau. Conditions at Dome C are known to be exceptional for astronomy. The seeing…
The SPHERE (spectro-photometric exoplanet research) extreme-AO planet hunter saw first light at the VLT observatory on Mount Paranal in May 2014 after ten years of development. Great efforts were put into modelling its performance,…
The Pierre Auger Observatory has begun a major Upgrade of its already impressive capabilities, with an emphasis on improved mass composition determination using the surface detectors of the Observatory. Known as AugerPrime, the upgrade will…
Here we describe the design and performance of the Spider instrument. Spider is a balloon-borne cosmic microwave background polarization imager that will map part of the sky at 90, 145, and 280 GHz with sub-degree resolution and high…