Related papers: Stellar photometry with Multi Conjugate Adaptive O…

We introduce new methods for robust high-precision photometry from well-sampled images of a non-crowded field with a strongly varying point-spread function. For this work, we used archival imaging data of the open cluster M37 taken by MMT…

High-contrast adaptive optics imaging is a powerful technique to probe the architectures of planetary systems from the outside-in and survey the atmospheres of self-luminous giant planets. Direct imaging has rapidly matured over the past…

A new method for a simultaneous search for clusters of galaxies in X-ray photon maps and optical galaxy maps is described. The merging of X-ray and optical data improves the source identification so that a large amount of telescope time for…

The availability and performance of laser-based adaptive optics (AO) systems are strongly dependent on the power and quality of the laser beam before being projected to the sky. Frequent and time-consuming alignment procedures are usually…

We conduct a series of comparisons between spectroscopic and photometric observations of globular clusters and stellar models to examine their predictive power. Data from medium-to-high resolution spectroscopic surveys of lithium allow us…

We present significantly improved proper motion measurements of the Milky Way's central stellar cluster. These improvements are made possible by refining our astrometric reference frame with a new geometric optical distortion model for the…

Globular clusters represent stellar laboratories where observations can be used to validate models of stellar evolution. In this study, we put forth new ultraviolet (UV) photometric results of stars in the Galactic globular cluster NGC…

The ongoing microlensing searches have generated more photometric measurements of pulsating stars than all previous observing projects combined. In particular, OGLE has made ~ 340,000 B, V, and I-band measurements of ~ 1,300 Cepheids in the…

Strong gravitational lensing is a powerful probe of the distribution of matter on sub-kpc scales. It can be used to test the existence of completely dark subhalos surrounding galaxies, as predicted by the standard cold dark matter model, or…

We describe the results from a new instrument which combines Lucky Imaging and Adaptive Optics to give the first routine direct diffraction-limited imaging in the visible on a 5m telescope. With fast image selection behind the Palomar AO…

We explore how diffuse stellar light and globular clusters (GCs) can be used to trace the matter distribution of their host halo using an observational methodology. For this, we use 117 simulated dark matter (DM) haloes from the $(34.4~\rm…

We analise the efficiency of wavefront reconstruction in the MultiConjugate Adaptive Optics system for the European Solar Telescope (EST). We present preliminary results derived from numerical simulations. We study a 4 meter class telescope…

Identifying stars belonging to different classes is vital in order to build up statistical samples of different phases and pathways of stellar evolution. In the era of surveys covering billions of stars, an automated method of identifying…

We explore the limits of photometric reductions of crowded stellar fields observed with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Two photometric procedures, based on the DoPHOT and DAOPHOT/ALLFRAME programs…

An increasing number of photometric observations of multiple stellar populations in Galactic globular clusters is seriously challenging the paradigm of GCs hosting single, simple stellar populations. These multiple populations manifest…

We present a modified adaptive matched filter algorithm designed to identify clusters of galaxies in wide-field imaging surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The cluster-finding technique is fully adaptive to imaging surveys with…

A review of the MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) project is presented. MOA is a collaboration of approximately 30 astronomers from New Zealand and Japan established with the aim of finding and detecting microlensing events…

Stellar blends, where two or more stars appear blended in an image, pose a significant visualization challenge in astronomy. Traditionally, distinguishing these blends from single stars has been costly and resource-intensive, involving…

Astrometry is one of the main science case which drives the requirements of the next multiconjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) systems for future extremely large telescopes. The small diffraction limited point-spread function (PSF) and the high…

We present a massive spectroscopic survey of Galactic O stars, GOSSS, based on new, high signal-to-noise ratio, R~2500 blue-violet digital observations from both hemispheres. The sample size and selection criteria; the relationship between…