Related papers: Low Wind Effect on VLT/SPHERE : impact, mitigation…
Condensate clouds strongly impact the spectra of brown dwarfs and exoplanets. Recent discoveries of variable L/T transition dwarfs argued for patchy clouds in at least some ultracool atmospheres. This study aims to measure the frequency and…
The current status of the high spatial resolution imaging interferometry in optical astronomy is reviewed in the light of theoretical explanation, as well as of experimental constraints that exist in the present day technology. The basic…
In astronomy or biological imaging, refractive index inhomogeneities of e.g. atmosphere or tissues induce optical aberrations which degrade the desired information hidden behind the medium. A standard approach consists in measuring these…
New aspects of the slow solar wind turbulent heating and acceleration are investigated. A physical meaning of the lower boundary of the Alfv\'en wave turbulent spectra in the solar atmosphere and the solar wind is studied and the…
The imaging and characterization of a larger range of exoplanets, down to young Jupiters and exo-Earths will require accessing very high contrasts at small angular separations with an increased robustness to aberrations, three constraints…
Spider is a balloon-borne array of six telescopes that will observe the Cosmic Microwave Background. The 2624 antenna-coupled bolometers in the instrument will make a polarization map of the CMB with approximately one-half degree resolution…
Very low Earth orbits (VLEO), typically classified as orbits below approximately 450 km in altitude, have the potential to provide significant benefits to spacecraft over those that operate in higher altitude orbits. This paper provides a…
Atmospheric turbulence degrades the quality of astronomical observations in ground-based telescopes, leading to distorted and blurry images. Adaptive Optics (AO) systems are designed to counteract these effects, using atmospheric…
The Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) is one of three instruments onboard the Swift observatory. The photometric calibration has been published, and this paper follows up with details on other aspects of the calibration including a…
The photon mean free path in a relativistically moving medium becomes long in the down-stream direction while short in the up-stream direction. As a result, the observed optical depth $\tau$ becomes small in the downstream direction while…
We present Spitzer 5-15 micron spectroscopy of one cool white dwarf and 3.6-8 micron photometry of 51 cool white dwarfs with T_eff < 6000 K. The majority of our targets have accurate BVRIJHK photometry and trigonometric parallax…
The solar photosphere provides us with a laboratory for understanding turbulence in a layer where the fundamental processes of transport vary rapidly and a strongly superadiabatic region lies very closely to a subadiabatic layer. Our tools…
Adaptive optics (AO) have been used to correct wavefronts to achieve diffraction limited point spread functions in a broad range of optical applications, prominently ground-based astronomical telescopes operating in near infra-red. While…
The SPHERE (spectro-photometric exoplanet research) extreme-AO planet hunter saw first light at the VLT observatory on Mount Paranal in May 2014 after ten years of development. Great efforts were put into modelling its performance,…
We present several diverse applications of the spherical fast convolution method suggested by Wandelt and Gorski (2001), which is useful for studies of telescope optical properties and for construction of shaped filters for analysis of…
Accurate measurement of polarization in spectral lines is important for the reliable inference of magnetic fields on the Sun. For ground based observations, polarimetric precision is severely limited by the presence of Earth's atmosphere.…
We operate the six German stations of the LOw Frequency ARray as standalone telescopes to observe more than 100 pulsars every week. To date, we have collected almost four years of high-quality data at an unprecedented weekly cadence. This…
We present a full-sky derivation of weak lensing observables in the Post-Friedmann (PF) formalism. Weak lensing has the characteristic of mixing small scales and large scales since it is affected by inhomogeneities integrated along the…
Context. Over the past decades, several interplanetary missions have studied small bodies in situ, leading to major advances in our understanding of their geological and geophysical properties. These missions, however, have had a limited…
Persistence effects in HgCdTe infrared detectors cause significant artifacts that can impact the quality of science observations for up to many hours after exposure to bright/saturating sources. This problem will have a substantially…