Related papers: WFIRST-2.4: What Every Astronomer Should Know

The Wide-field High-resolution Infrared TElescope (WHITE) will be dedicated in the first years of its life to carrying out a few (well focused in terms of science objectives and time) legacy surveys. WHITE would have an angular resolution…

High precision astrometry aims at source position determination to a very small fraction of the diffraction image size, in high SNR regime. One of the key limitations to such goal is the optical response variation of the telescope over a…

[abridged] WFIRST is uniquely capable of finding planets with masses as small as Mars at separations comparable to Jupiter, i.e., beyond the current ice lines of their stars. These planets fall between the close-in planets found by Kepler…

The need for both high quality images and lightweight structures is one of the main drivers in space telescope design. An efficient wavefront control system will become mandatory in future large observatories, retaining performance while…

Since the beginning of the Space Age optical sensors have been one of the main instruments for positioning and tracking known space objects. Nowadays, the unrelenting growth of man-made objects together with the overcrowding of the useful…

The launch of JWST has ushered in a new era of high precision infrared astronomy, allowing us to probe nearby white dwarfs for cold dust, exoplanets, and tidally heated exomoons. While previous searches for these exoplanets have…

We present the design of an all-reflective, bi-folded Schmidt telescope aimed at surveys of extended astronomical objects with extremely-low surface brightness. The design leads to a high image quality without any diffracting spider, along…

Astronomers working with faint targets will benefit greatly from improved image quality on current and planned ground-based telescopes. At present, most adaptive optic systems are targeted at the highest resolution with bright guide stars.…

Observations at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths promise to revolutionize the study of high redshift galaxies and AGN by providing a unique probe of the conditions within heavily extinguished regions of star formation and nuclear…

We present a detailed overview of the science goals and predictions for the Prime-Cam direct detection camera/spectrometer being constructed by the CCAT-prime collaboration for dedicated use on the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST).…

We discuss some of the practical considerations that need to be made in the design of extra-galactic field surveys using FIRST. We investigate the various limitations that confusion noise imposes on possible FIRST surveys and the benefits…

The ultimate astronomical observatory would be a formation flying interferometer in space, immune to atmospheric turbulence and absorption, free from atmospheric and telescope thermal emission, and reconfigurable to adjust baselines…

The PRobe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA) is an infrared observatory for the next decade, currently in Phase A, with a 1.8m telescope actively cooled to 4.5K. On board, an infrared camera, PRIMAger, equipped with…

Precise cosmological measurements are essential for understanding the evolution of the universe and the nature of dark energy. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the most sensitive single-dish radio telescope, has…

(Abridged) We consider the scientific case for a large aperture (10-12m class) optical spectroscopic survey telescope with a field of view comparable to that of LSST. Such a facility could enable transformational progress in several areas…

NASA's proposed WFIRST-AFTA mission will discover thousands of exoplanets with separations from the habitable zone out to unbound planets, using the technique of gravitational microlensing. The Study Analysis Group 11 of the NASA Exoplanet…

MIRI (the Mid-Infrared Instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)) operates from 5 to 28.5 microns and combines over this range: 1.) unprecedented sensitivity levels; 2.) sub-arcsec angular resolution; 3.) freedom from atmospheric…

A space-based far-infrared interferometer could work synergistically with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) to revolutionize our understanding of the astrophysical processes leading to the…

There is a major opportunity for the KDUST 2.5m telescope to carry out the next generation IR survey. A resolution of 0.2 arcsec is obtainable from Dome A over a wide field. This opens a unique discovery space during the 2015-2025 decade. A…

We present an overview of SPICA, the Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics, a world-class space observatory optimized for mid- and far-IR astronomy (from 5 to ~210um) with a cryogenically cooled ~3.2m telescope (<6 K). Its…