Related papers: Systems engineering applied to ELT instrumentation…
We present a discussion of the design issues and trade-offs that have been considered in putting together a new concept for MOSAIC, the multi-object spectrograph for the E-ELT. MOSAIC aims to address the combined science cases for E-ELT MOS…
Since 2005 ESO has been working with its community and industry to develop an extremely large optical/infrared telescope. ESO's Extremely Large Telescope, or ELT for short, is a revolutionary ground-based telescope that will have a 39-metre…
The scientific detector systems for the ESO ELT first-light instruments, HARMONI, MICADO, and METIS, together will require 27 science detectors: seventeen 2.5 $\mu$m cutoff H4RG-15 detectors, four 4K x 4K 231-84 CCDs, five 5.3 $\mu$m cutoff…
The first generation of E-ELT instruments will include an optical-infrared High Resolution Spectrograph, conventionally indicated as EELT-HIRES, which will be capable of providing unique breakthroughs in the fields of exoplanets, star and…
The Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS) is a space mission concept aimed at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and…
The next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs), with their wide apertures and advanced Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) systems, will provide unprecedented sharp and deep observations, even surpassing the capabilities of…
Recently, the design study `Einstein gravitational wave Telescope' (ET) has been funded within the European FP7 framework. The ambitious goal of this project is to provide a conceptual design of a detector with a hundred times better…
Large astronomical instruments using tens to hundreds of optical or infrared science detectors pose specific challenges for detector control, where, in addition to performance, other engineering aspects like scalability, power consumption,…
Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology can provide for deformable mirrors (DMs) with excellent performance within a favorable economy of scale. Large MEMS-based astronomical adaptive optics (AO) systems such as the Gemini Planet…
Deep observations of the Universe, usually as a part of sky surveys, are one of the symbols of the modern astronomy because they can allow big collaborations, exploiting multiple facilities and shared knowledge. The new generation of…
Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy is now well established as a key observational approach to address critical topics at the frontiers of astroparticle physics and high-energy astrophysics. Whilst the field of TeV astronomy was once dominated…
The Advanced Gamma-ray Imaging System (AGIS) is a next-generation ground-based gamma-ray observatory being planned in the U.S. The anticipated sensitivity of AGIS is about one order of magnitude better than the sensitivity of current…
One of the prominent science goal of the ELTs will be to study the physics and mass assembly of galaxies at very high redshifts. Here, we present the galaxy evolution science case for EAGLE, which is a NIR multi-integral field spectrograph…
The Ingot WFS represents an innovative and indispensable class of sensors conceived to overcome some limitations due to the LGSs geometry, which is significantly different from the point-object originated by a NGS. Here we overview the…
I review the current capabilities of small, medium and large telescopes in the study of minor bodies of the Solar System (MBOSS), with the goal of identifying those areas where the next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) are…
The next generation ground-based extremely large telescopes (ELTs) present incredible opportunities to discover and characterize diverse planetary systems, even potentially habitable worlds. Adaptive-optics assisted thermal-IR (3-14 micron)…
The Thirty-Meter Telescope is an ambitious project to build a giant segmented mirror telescope with fully integrated adaptive optics systems that will produce diffraction-limited images. A powerful suite of instruments is being developed…
The problems caused by the gap between system- and software-level architecting practices, especially in the context of Systems of Systems where the two disciplines inexorably meet, is a well known issue with a disappointingly low amount of…
The Planetary Camera and Spectrograph (PCS) for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be dedicated to detecting and characterising nearby exoplanets with sizes from sub-Neptune to Earth-size in the neighbourhood of the Sun. This goal is…
The next large NASA mission in the field of gamma-ray astronomy, GLAST, is scheduled for launch in 2007. Aside from the main instrument LAT (Large-Area Telescope), a gamma-ray telescope for the energy range between 20 MeV and > 100 GeV, a…