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

The far-IR spectral window plays host to a wide range of both spectroscopic and photometric diagnostics with which to open the protoplanetary disks and exoplanet research to wavelengths completely blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. These…

ESA has identified interferometry as one of the major goals of the Horizon 2000+ programme. Infrared interferometers are a highly sensitive astronomical instruments that enable us to observe terrestrial planets around nearby stars. In this…

The outer regions of globular clusters can enable us to answer many fundamental questions concerning issues ranging from the formation and evolution of clusters and their multiple stellar populations to the study of stars near and beyond…

A 30 m class optical/near-IR telescope in the Northern Hemisphere, equipped for diffraction-limited imaging and high-resolution, multi-object spectroscopy of faint stars, would enable a transformational investigation of the formation and…

The population of giant planets on wide orbits around low-mass M dwarf stars is poorly understood, but the unprecedented sensitivity of JWST NIRCam coronagraphic imaging now provides direct access to planets significantly less massive than…

We present the architectural concept for the Far-Infrared Enhanced Survey Spectrometer (FIRESS) for the Probe Mission for far-IR Astrophysics (PRIMA). FIRESS spans the 24--235 micron range with four R ~ 100 slit-fed grating modules, each…

FIRST is a prototype instrument built to demonstrate the capabilities of the pupil remapping technique, using single-mode fibers and working at visible wavelengths. We report on observations of the binary system Capella at three epochs over…

The Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) is a dedicated time-domain multi-band ($u$, $g$, $r$, $i$, and $z$) photometric survey facility under construction. In this paper, we present a preliminary study that assesses the quality of…

In 2006 ESO Council authorized a Phase B study of a European AO-telescope with a 42 m segmented primary with a 5-mirror design, the E-ELT. Several reports and working groups have already presented science cases for an E-ELT, specifically…

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a fiber fed multi-object spectrometer for the Subaru Telescope that will conduct a variety of targeted surveys for studies of dark energy, galaxy evolution, and galactic archaeology. The key to the…

India reached a major milestone in the area of space astronomy with the successful launch and post-launch operations of its first space observatory, AstroSat. The success of this space observatory and the lessons learned must be utilized…

Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high…

The Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) aims to be the premier next generation large diameter (50-meter) single dish observatory capable of observations across the millimeter/sub-millimeter spectrum, from 30 to 950~GHz.…

The utilization of a 6.5m monolithic primary mirror in a compact three-mirror anastigmat (TMA) telescope design offers unprecedented capabilities to accommodate various next generation science instruments. This design enables the rapid and…

Astrometric detection and mass determination of Earth-mass exoplanets requires sub-microarcsec accuracy, which is theoretically possible with an imaging space telescope using field stars as an astrometric reference. The measurement must…

The advent of new deep+wide photometric lensing surveys will open up the possibility of direct measurements of the dark matter halos of dwarf galaxies. The HSC wide survey will be the first with the statistical capability of measuring the…

A major goal of modern astrophysics is to understand the processes by which the universe evolved from its initial simplicity, as seen in measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, to the universe we see today, with complexity on all…

Background. Relative astrometry at or below the micro-arcsec level with a 1m class space telescope has been repeatedly proposed as a tool for exo-planet detection and characterization, as well as for several topics at the forefront of…

Assess the joint capabilities of emerging telescopes for near-Earth objects (NEOs) survey and characterization, and what they will add to the current capabilities or replace. NASA telescopes in prime mission, in development, or under study,…

LOFT (Large Observatory For x-ray Timing) is one of the four missions selected in 2011 for assessment study for the ESA M3 mission in the Cosmic Vision program, expected to be launched in 2024. The LOFT mission will carry two instruments…