Related papers: Do fast stellar centroiding methods saturate the C…
The quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound for the joint estimation of the centroid and the separation between two incoherent point sources cannot be saturated. As such, the optimal measurements for extracting maximal information about both at the same…
We present a theoretical analysis of the measuring algorithm we use when applying the Diffracto-Astrometry technique to Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) saturated stellar images. Theoretical Point Spread…
Current measurements of the weak lensing signal induced by large scale structure provide useful constraints on a range of cosmological parameters. However, the ultimate succes of this technique depends on the accuracy with which one can…
Simulated images are essential in algorithm development and instrument testing for optical telescopes. During real observations, images obtained by optical telescopes are affected by spatially variable point spread functions (PSFs), a…
We consider the problem of approximating all real roots of a square-free polynomial $f$. Given isolating intervals, our algorithm refines each of them to a width of $2^{-L}$ or less, that is, each of the roots is approximated to $L$ bits…
Images taken by space telescopes typically have a superb spatial resolution, but a relatively poor sampling rate due to the finite CCD pixel size. Beyond the Nyquist limit, it becomes uncertain how much the pixelation effect may affect the…
Three centroiding techniques to estimate the position of the spots in a Shack Hartmann sensor: Normalized Centre of Gravity (CoG), Iteratively Weighted Centre of Gravity (IWCoG) and Intensity Weighted (IWC) centroiding are studied in…
Background. Astrometry at or below the micro-arcsec level with an imaging telescope assumes that the uncertainty on the location of an unresolved source can be an arbitrarily small fraction of the detector pixel, given a sufficient photon…
Anisoplanatic effects can cause significant systematic photometric uncertainty in the analysis of dense stellar fields observed with adaptive optics. Program packages have been developed for a spatially variable PSF, but they require that a…
We present a thorough experimental evaluation of several crossing minimization heuristics that are based on the construction and iterative improvement of a planarization, i.e., a planar representation of a graph with crossings replaced by…
Strong evidence for deep mixing has been uncovered for slowly rotating F, and A stars of the main sequence. As the accretion/diffusion model for the formation of lboo stars is heavily dependent on mixing in superficial regions, such deep…
The detection of planets around very low-mass stars with the radial velocity method is hampered by the fact that these stars are very faint at optical wavelengths where the most high-precision spectrometers operate. We investigate the…
We present a generic algorithm for performing astronomical image registration and pointing refinement. The method is based on matching the positions and fluxes of available point sources in image overlap regions. This information is used to…
Weak gravitational lensing requires precise measurements of galaxy shapes and therefore an accurate knowledge of the PSF model. The latter can be a source of systematics that affect the shear two-point correlation function. A key stake of…
Fitting spectral distributions of total fluxes or image intensities are two standard methods for estimating the masses of starless cores and protostellar envelopes. These mass estimates, which are the main source and basis of our knowledge…
Planned wide-field weak lensing surveys are expected to reduce the statistical errors on the shear field to unprecedented levels. In contrast, systematic errors like those induced by the convolution with the point spread function (PSF) will…
A main science goal for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is to measure the cosmic shear signal from weak lensing to extreme accuracy. One difficulty, however, is that with the short exposure time ($\simeq$15 seconds) proposed, the…
We present data collected using the camera PISCES coupled with the Firt Light Adaptive Optics (FLAO) mounted at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The images were collected using two natural guide stars with an apparent magnitude of R<13…
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…
We present our investigation into the impact of wavefront errors on high accuracy astrometry using Fourier Optics. MICADO, the upcoming near-IR imaging instrument for the Extremely Large Telescope, will offer capabilities for relative…