Related papers: PIONIER: a visitor instrument for the VLTI

As an in-house instrument developmental activity at ARIES, the 4Kx4K CCD Imager is designed and developed as a first-light instrument for the axial port of the 3.6m DOT. The f/9 beam of the telescope having a plate-scale of ~ 6.4 arc-sec/mm…

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) has two 8.4-m primary mirrors that produce beams that can be combined coherently in a "Fizeau" interferometric mode. In principle, the Fizeau PSF enables the probing of structure at a resolution up to…

PRISM (Polarized Radiation Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) was proposed to ESA in response to the Call for White Papers for the definition of the L2 and L3 Missions in the ESA Science Programme. PRISM would have two instruments: (1) an…

The Peters Automated Infrared Imaging Telescope (PAIRITEL) is the first meter-class telescope operating as a fully robotic IR imaging system. Dedicated in October 2004, PAIRITEL began regular observations in mid-December 2004 as part of a…

The SPIFFI integral field spectrometer is operated as a subunit of the AO instrument SINFONI on the VLT. It will be upgraded and reused as SPIFFIER in the new VLT instrument ERIS. In January 2016 an early upgrade of several optical…

The Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI) is a long-baseline infrared interferometer located at Palomar Observatory, California. It was built as a testbed for interferometric techniques applicable to the Keck Interferometer. First fringes…

The upcoming launch of the first space based X-ray polarimeter in $\sim 40$ years will provide powerful new diagnostic information to study accreting compact objects. In particular, analysis of rapid variability of the polarisation degree…

The Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) of the "Planck Surveyor" ESA mission will perform high-resolution imaging of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies at four frequencies in the 30-100 GHz range. We review the LFI main scientific…

We are designing and constructing a new SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) instrument to search for direct evidence of interstellar communications via pulsed laser signals at near-infrared wavelengths. The new instrument design…

X-shooter is the first 2nd generation instrument of the ESO Very Large Telescope(VLT). It is a very efficient, single-target, intermediate-resolution spectrograph that was installed at the Cassegrain focus of UT2 in 2009. The instrument…

Camera and lidar are important sensor modalities for robotics in general and self-driving cars in particular. The sensors provide complementary information offering an opportunity for tight sensor-fusion. Surprisingly, lidar-only methods…

A laboratory prototype spectral/spatial interferometer has been constructed to demonstrate the feasibility of the double Fourier technique at Far Infrared (FIR) wavelengths (0.15 - 1 THz). It is planned to use this demonstrator to…

The Planet Formation Imager (PFI) is a project for a very large optical interferometer intended to obtain images of the planet formation process at scales as small as the Hill sphere of giant exoplanets. Its main science instruments will…

Observatories constructed solely for photometric monitoring make it possible to understand the temporal nature of objects over time scales that historically have been difficult to achieve. We report on one such observatory, the Remote…

The limiting magnitude is a key issue for optical interferometry. Pairwise fringe trackers based on the integrated optics concepts used for example in GRAVITY seem limited to about K=10.5 with the 8m Unit Telescopes of the VLTI, and there…

The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a fully-automated, wide-field survey aimed at a systematic exploration of the optical transient sky. The transient survey is performed using a new 8.1 square degree camera installed on the 48-inch…

The ultra-violet (UV) high-resolution spectropolarimeter Pollux is being studied in Europe under CNES leadership for the LUVOIR space mission. LUVOIR is a projected 15-m telescope equipped with a suite of instruments proposed to NASA.…

In the last few years, integrated optics (IO) beam combiners have facilitated the emergence of 4-telescope interferometers such as PIONIER or GRAVITY, boosting the imaging capabilities of the VLTI. However, the spectral range beyond…

The Penn State Pathfinder is a prototype warm fiber-fed Echelle spectrograph with a Hawaii-1 NIR detector that has already demonstrated 7-10 m/s radial velocity precision on integrated sunlight. The Pathfinder testbed was initially setup…

Digital signal recorders are becoming widely used in several subfields of centimetre-wavelength radio astronomy. We review the benefits and design considerations of such systems and describe the Princeton Mark IV instrument, an…