Related papers: On-sky tests of sky-subtraction methods for fiber-…
The Shear TEsting Programme, STEP, is a collaborative project to improve the accuracy and reliability of all weak lensing measurements in preparation for the next generation of wide-field surveys. In this first STEP paper we present the…
We develop a pseudo power spectrum technique for measuring the lensing power spectrum from weak lensing surveys in both the full sky and flat sky limits. The power spectrum approaches have a number of advantages over the traditional…
The performance of adaptive optics systems is partially dependant on the algorithms used within the real-time control system to compute wavefront slope measurements. We demonstrate use of a matched filter algorithm for the processing of…
We have designed and built the first band-limited coronagraphic mask used for ground-based high-contrast imaging observations. The mask resides in the focal plane of the near-infrared camera PHARO at the Palomar Hale telescope and receives…
Star surveys and model analyses show that many stars have absolute stable fluxes as good as 3% in 0.3-35{\mu}m wavebands and about 1% in the visible wavebands. The relative flux calibrations between stars are better than 0.2%. Some stars…
Starshades are a leading technology to enable the detection and spectroscopic characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. In this paper we report on optical experiments of sub-scale starshades that advance critical starlight suppression…
Subtracting the changing sky contribution from the near-infrared (NIR) spectra of faint astronomical objects is challenging and crucial to a wide range of science cases such as estimating the velocity dispersions of dwarf galaxies, studying…
Aims: Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) is a powerful approach for the study of nearby galaxies since it enables a detailed analysis of their resolved physical properties. Here we present the sample of nearby galaxies selected to exploit…
The contrasts of features in the quiet Sun are studied using filtergrams recorded by the Broad-band Filter Imager on the Hinode/Solar Optical Telescope. In a first step, the scattered light originating in the instrument is modeled using…
We present the characterization and calibration of the Slow-Scan observation mode of the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) onboard the AKARI satellite. The FIS, one of the two focal-plane instruments on AKARI, has four photometric bands between…
Single-exposure spectra in large spectral surveys are valuable for time domain studies such as stellar variability, but there is no available method to eliminate cosmic rays for single-exposure, multi-fiber spectral images. In this paper,…
We present an assessment of the accuracy of common operations performed in $21$-cm spectral line stacking experiments. To this end, we generate mock interferometric data surveying the 21-cm emission at frequency $1310<\nu<1420$ MHz…
The recent IRLOS upgrade for VLT/MUSE narrow field mode (NFM) introduced a full-pupil mode to enhance sensitivity and sky coverage. This involved replacing the 2x2 Shack-Hartmann sensor with a single lens for full-aperture photon…
Ground-based astronomy is unavoidably subject to the adverse effect of atmospheric turbulence, a.k.a. the seeing, which blurs the images and limits the achievable spatial resolution. For spectroscopic observations, it leads to slit or…
Recent monitoring programs of ultra cool field M and L dwarfs (low mass stars or brown dwarfs) have uncovered low amplitude photometric I-band variations which may be associated with an inhomogeneous distribution of photospheric…
Time-series photometry taken from ground-based facilities is improved with the use of comparison stars due to the short timescales of atmospheric-induced variability. However, the sky is bright in the thermal infrared (3-5 um), and the…
The spectral region around 10 micrometer, showing prominent dust emission bands, is commonly used to derive the chemical composition of protoplanetary dust. Different analysis methods have been proposed for this purpose, but so far, no…
We describe the recent modifications to the data reduction technique for observations acquired with the scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) mounted on the 6-m telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory that allow the…
We describe techniques for photometric calibration of optical spectra obtained with the MMT's fiber-fed spectrograph, Hectospec. The atmospheric dispersion compensation prisms built into the MMT's f/5 wide field corrector effectively…
In this paper, we present a catalogue of the spectra of bright stars observed during the sky survey using the Far-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (FIMS), which was designed primarily to observe diffuse emissions. By carefully eliminating…