Related papers: Instruments on large optical telescopes -- A case …

By almost any measure, the Parkes Radio Telescope is the most successful scientific instrument ever built in Australia. The telescope is unsurpassed in terms of the number of astronomers, both national and international, who have used the…

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be a discovery machine for the astronomy and physics communities, revealing astrophysical phenomena from the Solar System to the outer reaches of the observable Universe. While many…

As telescopes get larger, the size of a seeing-limited spectrograph for a given resolving power becomes larger also, and for ELTs the size will be so great that high resolution instruments of simple design will be infeasible. Solutions…

This paper calibrates how metrics derivable from the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System can be used to estimate the future impact of astronomy research careers and thereby to inform decisions on resource allocation such as job hires and…

Observational astrophysics uses sophisticated technology to collect and measure electromagnetic and other radiation from beyond the Earth. Modern observatories produce large, complex datasets and extracting the maximum possible information…

The Origins Space Telescope (OST) will transform our understanding of the Universe, from formation of the earliest galaxies to the creation of habitable worlds. OST's Mission Concept 1, the subject of this report, features a cold (4 K)…

Observatories, Institutes and Centers that support major astronomical facilities have, for decades, played a key role in maximizing the scientific return from their facilities and telescopes. It is crucial to realize that an "observatory"…

The Moon is our future. It may seem like a chimera with a projected cost in excess of 100 billion\$, and counting, dispensed on ARTEMIS with little to show to date. However it is the ideal site for the largest telescopes that we can dream…

Radio astronomy has benefited greatly from advances in technology and will continue to do so in the future. In fact, we are experiencing a revolution in the way radio astronomy is conducted as our instruments allow us now to directly…

A concept of the ground-based optical astronomical observations efficiency is considered in this paper. We believe that a telescope efficiency can be increased by properly allocating observation tasks with respect to the current environment…

Observational astronomy has changed drastically in the last decade: manually driven target-by-target instruments have been replaced by fully automated robotic telescopes. Data acquisition methods have advanced to the point that terabytes of…

Over the past ten years, the concept of adaptive optics has evolved from early experimental stages to a standard observing tool now available at almost all major optical and near-infrared telescope facilities. Adaptive optics will also be…

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is by far the largest telescope of any kind ever built. FAST produced its first light in September 2016 and it is now under commissioning, with normal operation to commence in…

Observing stars and satellites in optical wavelengths during the day (optical daytime astronomy) has begun a resurgence of interest. The recent dramatic dimming event of Betelgeuse has spurred interest in continuous monitoring of the…

In the ROSAT era of the mid-1990's, the problems facing deep X-ray surveys could be largely solved with 10 m class telescopes. In the first decade of this new millennium, with X-ray telescopes such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory and…

I review the status of science with wide field surveys. For many decades surveys have been the backbone of astronomy, and the main engine of discovery, as we have mapped the sky at every possible wavelength. Surveys are an efficient use of…

Atomic clocks are at the leading edge of accuracy and precision and are essential for synchronization of distributed critical infrastructure, position, navigation and timing, and scientific applications. There has been a breakthrough in the…

Spectroscopy is one of the most important tools that an astronomer has for studying the universe. This chapter begins by discussing the basics, including the different types of optical spectrographs, with extension to the ultraviolet and…

New mass-produced, wide-field, small-aperture telescopes have the potential to revolutionize ground-based astronomy by greatly reducing the cost of collecting area. In this paper, we introduce a new class of large telescope based on these…

A new method for absolute polarimetric calibration of large telescopes is presented. The proposed method is highly accurate and is based on the calibration of a small sub-aperture, which is then extended to the full system by means of…