Related papers: Design Differences between the Pan-STARRS PS1 and …
Tunable filters are set to revolutionize many aspects of experimental astrophysics, particularly for applications in observational cosmology. After a summary of the fundamentals of classical spectroscopy, we present a review of the current…
The thermal and dielectric anomalies of window-type glasses at low temperatures ($T<$ 1 K) are rather successfully explained by the two-level systems (2LS) standard tunneling model (STM). However, the magnetic effects discovered in the…
Images obtained with single-conjugate adaptive optics (AO) show spatial variation of the point spread function (PSF) due to both atmospheric anisoplanatism and instrumental aberrations. The poor knowledge of the PSF across the field of view…
Photometric stereo (PS) techniques nowadays remain constrained to an ideal laboratory setup where modeling and calibration of lighting is amenable. To eliminate such restrictions, we propose an efficient principled variational approach to…
This article presents research work on a spectroscopic survey telescope. Our idea is as follows: for such a telescope, a pure reflecting optical system is designed, which should have an aperture and a field of view (FOV) both as large as…
Long wavelength spectral distortions in the Cosmic Microwave Background arising from the 21-cm transition in neutral Hydrogen are a key probe of Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionization. These features may reveal the nature of the first…
We describe a rapid and direct method for regularizing, post-facto, the point-spread function (PSF) of a telescope or other imaging instrument, across its entire field of view. Imaging instruments in general blur point sources of light by…
In the context of the tremendous progress achieved at HERA in diffraction and the need for a new level of statistical and systematic precision, the new very large acceptance forward spectrometer planned by H1 (VFPS) is presented and the…
We outline polarization performance calculations and predictions for the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) optics and show Mueller matrices for two of the first light instruments. Telescope polarization is due to polarization…
The twist angle between the monolayers in van der Waals heterostructures provides a new degree of freedom in tuning material properties. We compare the optical properties of WSe2 homobilayers with 2H and 3R stacking using photoluminescence,…
The MAGIC telescopes are two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) located on the Canary island of La Palma. The telescopes are designed to measure Cherenkov light from air showers initiated by gamma rays in the energy regime…
A new method for absolute polarimetric calibration of large telescopes is presented. The proposed method is highly accurate and is based on the calibration of a small sub-aperture, which is then extended to the full system by means of…
Many adaptive optics systems operate by measuring the distortion of the wavefront in one wavelength range and performing the scientific observations in a second, different wavelength range. One common technique is to measure wavefront…
Glints of light from specular reflection of the Sun are a technosignature of artificial satellites. If extraterrestrial intelligences have left artifacts in the Solar System, these may include flat mirror-like surfaces that also can glint.…
We report the design, fabrication and installation of a 'Twin Telescope' at Kodaikanal Observatory intended to augment the ongoing synoptic observations of the Sun that has been carried out since 1904. The telescope uses a 15 cm objective…
All telescopes and instruments are to some degree affected by scattered light. It is possible to estimate the amount of such scattered light, and even correct for it, with a radially extended point spread function (PSF). The outer parts of…
We have developed a light scattering technique based on differential measurement and polarization (differential light scattering, DLS) capable in principle of retrieving timing information with picosecond resolution without the need for…
Integrating inverse rendering with multi-view photometric stereo (MVPS) yields more accurate 3D reconstructions than the inverse rendering approaches that rely on fixed environment illumination. However, efficient inverse rendering with…
Fundamentally new technology is described for constructing low areal mass density (1kg/m^2), high precision (< 10micron RMS) reflectors scalable to large apertures (10 to 20 meters) for use as the primary element of a telescope system. A…
We observe a significant change in the TW Hya disk interior to 40~AU via archival unpolarized multi-wavelength Hubble Space Telescope/STIS and NICMOS images with an inner working angle (IWA) of 0\farcs4 (22~AU). Our images show the outer…