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

Liquid mirror telescopes are of interest to Astronomy because of their very low capital and operating costs. Low cost has a potentially revolutionary impact since it allows one to dedicate a large telescope to a narrowly focused project…

Research activities during the last decade have shown the strong potential of photonic devices to greatly simplify ground based and space borne astronomical instruments and to improve their performance. We focus specifically on the…

Telescope and detector developments continuously enable deeper and more detailed studies of astronomical objects. Larger collecting areas, improvement in dispersion and detector techniques, and higher sensitivities allow detection of more…

Within ten years, the era of large-scale systematics surveys will decay thanks to a complete census of exoplanetary systems within 200 pc from the Sun. With the first Lights foreseen between 2024 and 2028, the new generation of extremely…

In the era of Extremely Large Telescopes, the current generation of 8-10m facilities are likely to remain competitive at far-blue visible wavelengths for the foreseeable future. High-efficiency (>20%) observations of the ground UV (300-400…

Over the past century, major advances in astronomy and astrophysics have been largely driven by improvements in instrumentation and data collection. With the amassing of high quality data from new telescopes, and especially with the advent…

Far-infrared astronomy has advanced rapidly since its inception in the late 1950's, driven by a maturing technology base and an expanding community of researchers. This advancement has shown that observations at far-infrared wavelengths are…

For time-domain astronomy, it is crucial to frequently image celestial objects at specific depths within a predetermined cadence. To fulfill these scientific demands, scientists globally have started or planned the development of…

With long data sets available for asteroseismology from space missions, it is sometimes necessary to deal with time series that have large gaps. This is becoming particularly relevant for TESS, which is revisiting many fields on the sky…

Recently invented and demonstrated, optical lattice clocks hold great promise for improving the precision of modern timekeeping. These clocks aim at the 10^-18 fractional accuracy, which translates into a clock that would neither lose or…

Some 400 years after Galileo, modern telescopes have enabled humanity to "see" what the natural eye cannot. Astronomical images today contain information about incredibly large objects located across vast distances and reveal information…

High-angular-resolution imaging is crucial for many applications in modern astronomy and astrophysics. The fundamental diffraction limit constrains the resolving power of both ground-based and spaceborne telescopes. The recent idea of a…

Robo-AO is the first autonomous laser adaptive optics system and science instrument operating on sky. With minimal human oversight, the system robotically executes large scale surveys, monitors long-term astrophysical dynamics and…

In the development of space-based large telescope systems, having the capability to perform active optics correction allows correcting wavefront aberrations caused by thermal perturbations so as to achieve diffraction-limited performance…

There has been tremendous progress in the performance of optical frequency standards since the first proposals to carry out precision spectroscopy on trapped, single ions in the 1970s. The estimated fractional frequency uncertainty of…

Space debris is a major threat to the satellite infrastructure. A collision with even small particle, e.g. 1 cm of size, can cause a catastrophic event when the parent body, spacecraft or upper stage, will break up into hundreds of…

The rapid cost growth of flagship space missions has created a crisis for astronomy and planetary science. We have hit the funding wall. For the past 3 decades scientists have not had to think much about how space technology would change…

An important tool for the development of the next generation of extremely large telescopes (ELTs) is a robust Systems Engineering (SE) methodology. GMACS is a first-generation multi-object spectrograph that will work at visible wavelengths…

I summarize the excitement of my role primarily in the early years of X-ray Astronomy. As a "second-generation" X-ray astronomer, I was privileged to participate in the enormous advance of the field, both technically and astrophysically,…

This note gives a short review of the statistical issues concerning upper limit calculation and claiming of discovery arising in the search for exotic physics with neutrino telescopes. Low sample sizes and significant instrumental…