Related papers: Aberration of starlight experiment
We propose a practical method to calculate Zernike aberrations from analysis of a single long-exposure defocused stellar image. It consists in fitting the aberration coefficients and seeing blur directly to a realistic image binned into…
This paper discusses new fundamental physics experiment to test relativistic gravity at the accuracy better than the effects of the 2nd order in the gravitational field strength. The Laser Astrometric Test Of Relativity (LATOR) mission uses…
We have developed a new method to improve the transit detection of Earth-sized planets in front of solar-like stars by fitting stellar microvariability by means of a spot model. A large Monte Carlo numerical experiment has been designed to…
It is known that a relative translational motion between the deflector and the observer affects gravitational lensing. In this paper, a lens equation is obtained to describe such effects on actual lensing observables. Results can be easily…
One of the biggest challenges associated with a nulling interferometer-based approach to detecting extra-solar Earth-like planets comes from the extremely stringent requirements of pathlength, polarization and amplitude matching in the…
This paper presents a method for determining spacecraft angular rates using event-based camera sensing. This is achieved by analyzing the temporal distribution of brightness events triggered by the apparent motion of stars. The location and…
Observations of gamma-ray bursts are being used to test for a momentum dependence of the speed of photons, partly motivated by preliminary results reported in analyses of some quantum-spacetime scenarios. The relationship between time of…
This article describes a parallax experiment performed by undergraduate physics students at Queensland University of Technology. The experiment is analogous to the parallax method used in astronomy to measure distances to the local stars.…
Astrophysical polarization measurements provide some of the strongest constraints on the photon sector of the non-minimal Standard-Model Extension. This paper reviews some recent results obtained by combining optical linear and circular…
Optical interferometry provides us with a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of stellar structure and evolution. Through direct observation of rotationally distorted photospheres at sub-milliarcsecond scales, we are now able to…
In real telescopes, the optical parameters evolve with time, and the degradation is often not uniform. This introduces variations in the image profile and therefore photo-centre displacements which, unless corrected, may result in…
We study the impact of the atmospheric differential chromatic refraction on the measurements and precision of relative astrometry. Specifically, we address the problem of measuring the separations of close pairs of binary stars with…
In the last two decades, theories explaining the same experiments as well as special relativity does, were developed by using different synchronization procedures. All of them are ether-like theories. Most authors believe these theories to…
Optical Doppler shift demonstration experiments are not a simple task since the light source cannot usually be moved in a sufficiently smooth and uniform manner to keep the level of noise well below of that of the signal. For that reason…
Motivated by recent images of black holes in M87 and our galaxy, efficient relativistic ray tracing was developed to simulate the snapshots of variable emissions around the black holes. Half a century ago, the appearance of a moving…
This paper describes a new class of experiments that use dispersion in optical fibers to convert the gravitational frequency shift of light into a measurable phase shift or time delay. Two conceptual models are explored. In the first model,…
Spectrographs nominally contain a degree of quasi-static optical aberrations resulting from the quality of manufactured component surfaces, imperfect alignment, design residuals, thermal effects, and other other associated phenomena…
Atom interferometry is now reaching sufficient precision to motivate laboratory tests of general relativity. We begin by explaining the non-relativistic calculation of the phase shift in an atom interferometer and deriving its range of…
Pulsars of very different types - isolated objects, and binaries with short- and long-period orbits, white-dwarf and neutron-star companions - provide the means to test both the predictions of general relativity and the viability of…
Astrophysical observations are a powerful tool to constrain effects of Lorentz-invariance violation in the photon sector. Objects at high redshifts provide the longest possible baselines, and gamma-ray telescopes allow us to observe some of…