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

The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is expected to detect hundreds of free-floating planets, but it will not be able to measure their masses. However, simultaneous microlensing observations by both Euclid and WFIRST…

For the first time in history, humans have reached the point where it is possible to construct a revolutionary space-based observatory that has the capability to find dozens of Earth-like worlds, and possibly some with signs of life. This…

The Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is a set of mission concepts for the next generation of UVOIR space observatory with a primary aperture diameter in the 8-m to 16-m range that will allow us to perform some of…

Having achieved 'first-light' right before the opening ceremony on September 25, 2016, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is being busily commissioned. Its innovative design requires ~1000 points to be measured…

The Wide-Field X-ray Telescope (WFXT) is a proposed NASA mission dedicated to performing surveys of the sky in the soft X-ray band (0.3-6 keV). The key characteristics of this missions are a constant point spread function with Half Energy…

Using new cosmological models for galaxy evolution, predictions for the next generation of deep mid-IR surveys are presented for both the ASTRO-F space telescope (due for launch 2003) and the proposed HII/L2 mission (2010). Although ASTRO-F…

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a NASA MIDEX mission, will survey the entire sky in four bands from 3.3 to 23 microns with a sensitivity 1000 times greater than the IRAS survey. The WISE survey will extend the Two Micron All…

Astrometry is one of the main pillars of astronomy, and one of its oldest branches. Over the years, an increasing number of astrometric works by means of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data have revolutionized our understanding of various…

The Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) is a dedicated photometric surveying facility built jointly by the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO). Since many of its scientific…

We describe a concept for an imaging spectrograph for a large orbiting observatory such as NASA's proposed Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) based on an imaging Fourier transform spectrograph (IFTS). An IFTS has several important…

We present a description of the Dragonfly Wide Field Survey (DWFS), a deep photometric survey of a wide area of sky. The DWFS covers 330 $\mathrm{deg}^2$ in the equatorial GAMA fields and the Stripe 82 fields in the SDSS $g$ and $r$ bands.…

We introduce our new program to develop two-dimensional MEMS arrays of individually addressable micro-mirrors (''Micro-Mirror Devices'', MMDs) specifically optimized for astronomy, multi-slit spectroscopy in particular. After reviewing the…

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), due to launch in 2014, shall provide an unprecedented wealth of information in the near and mid-infrared wavelengths, thanks to its high-sensitivity instruments and its 6.5 m primary mirror, the…

The LSST survey was designed to deliver transformative results for four primary objectives: constraining dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way.…

To explore capabilities of moderate-size optical telescopes in surveys, the set of 9 new wide-field designs having apertures up to 1 m is considered. All but one systems have angular field of view in a range 3.5-10 degrees and flat focal…

NASA's WFIRST mission will perform a wide-field, NIR survey of the Galactic Bulge to search for exoplanets via the microlensing techniques. As the mission is due to launch in the mid-2020s, around half-way through the LSST Main Survey, we…

PFS (Prime Focus Spectrograph), a next generation facility instrument on the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope, is a very wide-field, massively multiplexed, optical and near-infrared spectrograph. Exploiting the Subaru prime focus, 2394…

The focus of this report is on the opportunities enabled by the combination of LSST, Euclid and WFIRST, the optical surveys that will be an essential part of the next decade's astronomy. The sum of these surveys has the potential to be…

LSST will open new vistas for cosmology in the next decade, but it cannot reach its full potential without data from other telescopes. Cosmological constraints can be greatly enhanced using wide-field ($>20$ deg$^2$ total survey area),…

Weak gravitational lensing observations are a key science driver for the NASA Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). To validate the performance of the WFIRST infrared detectors, we have performed a laboratory emulation of weak…