Related papers: An absolute calibration system for millimeter-accu…

Pulsed UV lasers can provide useful "testbeams" for observatories that use optical detectors, especially fluorescence detectors, to measure high energy cosmic-rays. The light observed by the detector is proportional to the energy of the…

We present constraints on violations of Lorentz Invariance based on Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) data. LLR measures the Earth-Moon separation by timing the round-trip travel of light between the two bodies, and is currently accurate to a few…

Precision searches for time-reversal symmetry violating interactions in polar molecules are extremely sensitive probes of high energy physics beyond the Standard Model. To extend the reach of these probes into the PeV regime, long coherence…

Lunar occultations (LO) provide a unique combination of high angular resolution and sensitivity at near-infrared wavelenghts. At the ESO Very Large Telescope, it is possible to achieve about 1 milliarcsecond (mas) resolution and detect…

Distance measurements for extragalactic objects are a fundamental problem in astronomy and cosmology. In the era of precision cosmology, we urgently need better measurements of cosmological distances to observationally test the increasing…

The Herschel SPIRE instrument consists of an imaging photometric camera and an imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS), both operating over a frequency range of 450-1550 GHz. In this paper, we briefly review the FTS design, operation,…

The XPM-1.0 is the regular version of the XPM catalogue. In comparison with XPM the astrometric catalogue of about 280 millions stars covering entire sky from -90 to +90 degrees in declination and in the magnitude range 10^m<B<22^m is…

Using a laser-based ranging method for precise environmental 3D sensing, LiDAR has numerous applications in science and industry. However, conventional LiDAR face challenges in simultaneously achieving high ranging precision and fast…

Time domain astronomy and the increasing number of exoplanet candidates call for reliable, robust, and automatic wavelength calibration. We present an algorithm for wavelength calibrating \'echelle spectrographs that uses order-by-order…

Precision photometric calibration is key to a number of astrophysical research areas such as supernova cosmology and dark energy studies. In the age of large surveys, pushing the limits of photometry is a worthy challenge, with traditional…

In this paper we examine the possibility of testing the equivalence principle, in its weak form, by analyzing the orbital motion of a pair of artificial satellites of different composition moving along orbits of identical shape and size in…

Large ground-based telescopes equipped with adaptive optics (AO) systems have ushered in a new era of high-resolution infrared photometry and astrometry. Relative astrometric accuracies of <0.2 mas have already been demonstrated from…

Searches for extrasolar planets using the periodic Doppler shift of stellar spectral lines have recently achieved a precision of 60 cm/s (ref 1), which is sufficient to find a 5-Earth-mass planet in a Mercury-like orbit around a Sun-like…

The Planet Hunting and Asteroseismology Explorer Spectrophotometer, PHASES, is a concept for a space-borne instrument to obtain flux calibrated spectra and measure micro-magnitude photometric variations of nearby stars. The science drivers…

Absolute normalisation of the LHC measurements with a precision of O(1%) is desirable but beyond the reach of the present LHC detectors. This series of papers proposes and evaluates a measurement method capable to achieve such a precision…

The astrometric calibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is described. For point sources brighter than r ~ 20 the astrometric accuracy is 45 milliarcseconds (mas) rms per coordinate when reduced against the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog,…

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has measured the last unknown neutrino mixing angle, {\theta}13, to be non-zero at the 7.7{\sigma} level. This is the most precise measurement to {\theta}13 to date. To further enhance the…

Absolute calibration of the Pierre Auger Observatory fluorescence detectors uses a light source at the telescope aperture. The technique accounts for the ombined effects of all detector components in a single measurement. The calibrated 2.5…

BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, is a 5-year program to measure the absolute cosmic distance scale and expansion rate with percent-level precision at redshifts z<0.7 and z~2.5. BOSS uses the "standard ruler" provided by…

The MICROSCOPE space mission aims to test the Equivalence Principle with an accuracy of $10^{-15}$. The drag-free micro-satellite will orbit around the Earth and embark a differential electrostatic accelerometer including two cylindrical…