Related papers: PIONIER: a status report
We present a machine learning based information retrieval system for astronomical observatories that tries to address user defined queries related to an instrument. In the modern instrumentation scenario where heterogeneous systems and…
The Virtual Observatory Registry is a distributed directory of information systems and other resources relevant to astronomy. To make it useful, facilities to query that directory must be provided to humans and machines alike. This article…
The Pulsar Virtual Observatory will provide a means for scientists in all fields to access and analyze the large data sets stored in pulsar surveys without specific knowledge about the data or the processing mechanisms. This is achieved by…
The great success of the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) has given us a new probe to study strong gravitational fields and to measure the physical properties of black holes and neutron stars. Here, we describe a "next-generation" x-ray…
Since its inception in the early 2000, the Virtual Observatory (VO), developed as a collaboration of many national and international projects, has become a major factor in the discovery and dissemination of astronomical information…
The Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Great Observatory for infrared astronomy, was launched 2003 August 25 and is returning excellent scientific data from its Earth-trailing solar orbit. Spitzer combines the intrinsic sensitivity achievable…
The ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) is an ongoing project to carry out public imaging surveys to support programs on the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). The first phase of the project started in July 1997 and consisted of a moderately deep,…
The ESPRESSO spectrograph at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has, since it began science operations in October 2018, revolutionised exoplanet science. The combination of the large VLT mirrors and the high resolution and stability of the…
The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors have completed their initial upgrade phase and will enter the first observing run in late 2015, with detector sensitivity expected to improve in future runs.…
The European Space Agency's Planck satellite was launched on 14 May 2009, and has been surveying the sky stably and continuously since 13 August 2009. Its performance is well in line with expectations, and it will continue to gather…
Preparing observing proposals is a classical exercise in an observational astronomer's life. In this paper, we summarize the general requirements to write a good proposal for the ESO telescopes, and eventually obtain telescope time. We…
The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is a next-generation high-contrast imager built for the Gemini Observatory. The GPI exoplanet survey (GPIES) consortium is made up of 102 researchers from 28 institutions in North and South America and Europe.…
This paper presents a visual tool, AVIATOR, that integrates the progressive visual analytics paradigm in the IR evaluation process. This tool serves to speed-up and facilitate the performance assessment of retrieval models enabling a result…
SPIFFI is an AO-fed integral field spectrograph operating as part of SINFONI on the VLT, which will be upgraded and reused as SPIFFIER in the new VLT instrument ERIS. In January 2016, we used new technology developments to perform an early…
We present the Strategic Scientific Plan (SSP) for the direction and activities of the Gemini Observatory in the 2020s. The overarching goal is to ensure that Gemini best uses the available resources to serve the needs of its international…
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…
After 101 nights of commissioning, the Gemini MCAO system (GeMS) started science operations in December 2012. After a brief reminder on GeMS specificities, we describe the overall GeMS performance, and we focus then on the first science…
The Kepler Mission, launched on Mar 6, 2009 was designed with the explicit capability to detect Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars using the transit photometry method. Results from just forty-three days of data…
The EAGLE instrument is a Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO) fed, multiple Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS), working in the Near Infra-Red (NIR), on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). A Phase A design study was delivered to…
Context:Optical interferometry is at a key development stage. ESO's VLTI has established a stable, robust infrastructure for long-baseline interferometry for general astronomical observers. The present second-generation instruments offer a…