Related papers: Gaia in-orbit realignment. Overview and data analy…
GAIA is the ``super-Hipparcos'' survey satellite selected as a Cornerstone 6 mission by the European Space Agency. GAIA can measure microlensing by the small excursions of the light centroid that occur during events. The all-sky…
In typical adaptive optics applications, the atmospheric residual turbulence affects the wavefront sensor response decreasing its sensitivity. On the other hand, wavefront sensors are generally calibrated in diffraction limited condition,…
Future large space telescopes will be equipped with adaptive optics (AO) to overcome wavefront aberrations and achieve high contrast for imaging faint astronomical objects, such as earth-like exoplanets and debris disks. In contrast to AO…
In an effort to transcend the limitations of differential imaging of exoplanets in the era of extremely large telescopes (ELTs), the first paper in this series established a rigorous, fully polarimetric framework for determining the science…
Reaching the high angular resolution and contrast level desired for exoplanetary science requires us to equip large telescopes with extreme adaptive optics (XAO) systems to compensate for the effect of the atmospheric turbulence at a very…
Wavefront sensing in solar adaptive-optics is currently done with correlating Shack-Hartmann sensors, although the spatial- and temporal-resolutions of the phase measurements are then limited by the extremely fast computing required to…
The crossed-sine wavefront sensor (WFS) is a pupil plane wavefront sensor that measures the first derivatives of the wavefront. It is made by three main components: a gradient transmission filter (GTF) built from a product of sine functions…
The space-variant wavefront reconstruction problem inherently exists in deep tissue imaging. In this paper,we propose a framework of Shack-Hartmann wavefront space-variant sensing with extended source illumination. The space-variant…
Gaia is an all sky, high precision astrometric and photometric satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) due for launch in 2010-2011. Its primary mission is to study the composition, formation and evolution of our Galaxy. Gaia will…
The future of space and ground based telescopes is intimately tied to technology and algorithm development surrounding wavefront sensing and control. Only with cutting edge developments and unusual ideas will we be able to build diffraction…
The ESA Gaia mission has revolutionized our understanding of the white dwarf population, delivering an unprecedented census of these nearby remnants and revealing previously unseen structures in the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram.…
Extreme adaptive optics (AO) is crucial for enabling the contrasts needed for ground-based high contrast imaging instruments to detect exoplanets. Pushing exoplanet imaging detection sensitivities towards lower mass, closer separations, and…
The Gaia satellite was selected as a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) in October 2000 and confirmed in 2002 with a current target launch date of 2011. The Gaia mission will gather on the same observational principles…
In the present paper, we consider the optical design of a zoom system for the active refocusing in laser guide star wavefront sensors. The system is designed according to the specifications coming from the Extremely Large Telescope…
Direct imaging and spectral characterization of exoplanets using extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) is a key science goal of future extremely large telescopes and space observatories. However, quasi-static wavefront errors will limit the…
The correction of quasi-static wavefront errors within a coronagraphic optical system will be a key challenge to overcome in order to directly image exoplanets in reflected light. These quasi-static errors are caused by mid to high-order…
Gaia's very accurate astrometric measurements will allow the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) to be improved by a few orders of magnitude in the optical. Several sets of quasars are used to define a kinematically stable…
Imaging exo-Earths is an exciting but challenging task because of the 10^-10 contrast ratio between these planets and their host star at separations narrower than 100 mas. Large segmented aperture space telescopes enable the sensitivity…
Wide field planetary camera 2 (WFPC2) exposures are already some 20 years older than Gaia epoch observations, or future JWST observations. As such, they offer an unprecedented time baseline for high-precision proper-motion studies, provided…
Focusing microcavities for surface acoustic waves (SAWs) produce highly localized strain and piezoelectric fields that can dynamically control excitations in nanostructures. Focusing transducers (FIDTs) that generate SAW beams which match…