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Near-future astronomical survey experiments, such as LSST, possess system requirements of unprecedented fidelity that span photometry, astrometry and shape transfer. Some of these requirements flow directly to the array of science imaging…
We employ electrostatic conversion drift calculations to match CCD pixel signal covariances observed in flat field exposures acquired using candidate sensor devices for the LSST Camera. We thus constrain pixel geometry distortions present…
In this paper, we summarize the technique of using Green functions to solve electrostatic problems. We start by deriving the electric potential in terms of a Green function and a charge distribution. We then provide a variety of example…
Millisecond focal plane telemetry is now becoming practical due to a new generation of near-IR detector arrays with sub-electron noise that are capable of kHz readout rates. Combining these data with those simultaneously available from the…
In this work, we develop a simulation-based model to predict the excess surface mass density (ESD) depending on the local density environment. Using a conditional stellar mass function, our foreground galaxies are tailored toward the bright…
The ambitious science goals of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) have motivated a search for new and unexpected sources of systematic error in the LSST camera. Flat-field images are a rich source of data on sensor anomalies,…
The 3.2 gigapixel LSST camera, an array of 189 thick fully-depleted CCDs, will repeatedly image the southern sky and accomplish a wide variety of science goals. However, its trove of tens of billions of object images implies stringent…
Motivated by the recognition that variation in the optical transmission of the atmosphere is probably the main limitation to the precision of ground-based CCD measurements of celestial fluxes, we review the physical processes that attenuate…
The ambitious goals of precision cosmology with wide-field optical surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) demand, as their foundation, precision CCD astronomy. This in turn requires an…
Digital co-addition of astronomical images is a common technique for increasing signal-to-noise and image depth. A modification of this simple technique has been applied to the detection of minor bodies in the Solar System: first stationary…
We present scope (Simulated CCD Observations for Photometric Experimentation), a Python package to create a forward model of telescope detectors and simulate stellar targets with motion relative to the CCD. The primary application of this…
Reduction of images and science analysis from ground-based telescopes such as the LSST requires detailed knowledge of the PSF of the image, which includes components attributable to the instrument as well as components attributable to the…
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's LSST Camera (LSSTCam) pixel response has been characterized using laboratory measurements with a grid of artificial stars. We quantify the contributions to photometry, centroid, point-spread function size,…
A common problem in the sciences is that a signal of interest is observed only indirectly, through smooth functionals of the signal whose values are then obscured by noise. In such inverse problems, the functionals dampen or entirely…
Spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have been recognized as an important future probe of the early Universe. Existing theoretical studies primarily focused on describing the evolution and creation of average…
The amount, size, and complexity of astronomical data-sets and databases are growing rapidly in the last decades, due to new technologies and dedicated survey telescopes. Besides dealing with poly-structured and complex data, sparse data…
Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) due to radiation damage above the Earth's atmosphere creates spurious trailing in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images. Radiation damage also creates unrelated warm pixels - but these happen to be perfect…
Machine learning techniques offer a precious tool box for use within astronomy to solve problems involving so-called big data. They provide a means to make accurate predictions about a particular system without prior knowledge of the…
Data analysis and interpretation often relies on an approximation of an empirical dataset by some analytic functions or models. Actual implementations usually rely on a non-linear multi-dimensional optimization algorithm, typically…
Many synoptic surveys are observing large parts of the sky multiple times. The resulting lightcurves provide a wonderful window to the dynamic nature of the universe. However, there are many significant challenges in analyzing these light…