Related papers: Recent advancements in the EST project

Low-cost mass-produced sensors and optics have recently made it feasible to build telescope arrays which observe the entire accessible sky simultaneously. In this article we discuss the scientific motivation for these telescopes, including…

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is uniquely equipped to search for Solar System bodies due to its unprecedented combination of depth and wide field coverage. Over a ten-year period starting in 2022, LSST will generate the largest…

The Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is a set of mission concepts for the next generation of UVOIR space observatory with a primary aperture diameter in the 8-m to 16-m range that will allow us to perform some of…

We recommend a conceptual design study for a spectroscopic facility in the southern hemisphere comprising a large diameter telescope, fiber system, and spectrographs collectively optimized for massively-multiplexed spectroscopy. As a…

The new axion helioscope at CERN started acquiring data during September of 2002: CAST (Cern Axion Solar Telescope) employs a decommissioned LHC dipole magnet to convert putative solar axions or axion-like particles into detectable photons.…

The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is one of the currently operating Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. H.E.S.S. operates in the broad energy range from a few tens of GeV to more than 50 TeV reaching its best sensitivity…

We have built and tested a compact, low-cost, but very-high-performance astronomical polarimeter based on a continuously rotating half-wave plate and a high-speed imaging detector. The polarimeter is suitable for small telescopes up to ~1 m…

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is expected to increase known small solar system object populations by an order of magnitude or more over the next decade, enabling a broad array of transformative solar system science…

ESO and ESA agreed to establish a number of Working Groups to explore possible synergies between these two major European astronomical institutions. This Working Group's mandate was to concentrate on fundamental questions in cosmology, and…

The TBT project is being developed under ESA's General Studies and Technology Programme (GSTP), and shall implement a test-bed for the validation of an autonomous optical observing system in a realistic scenario within the Space Situational…

The Europlanet-2020 programme, which ended on Aug 31st, 2019, included an activity called VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access), which focused on adapting Virtual Observatory (VO) techniques to handle Planetary Science data.…

The preparation of the long-term telescope schedule follows the submission and scientific review of new proposals. At the European Southern Observatory (ESO) this process entails scheduling the scientific proposals according to their…

The 4MOST instrument is a multi-object spectrograph that will address Galactic and extragalactic science cases simultaneously by observing targets from a large number of different surveys within each science exposure. This parallel mode of…

The ~39-m European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be the largest telescope ever built. This makes it particularly suitable for sensitive polarimetric observations, as polarimetry is a photon-starved technique. However, the telescope…

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is by far the largest telescope of any kind ever built. FAST produced its first light in September 2016 and it is now under commissioning, with normal operation to commence in…

The CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST) searches for solar axions employing a 9 Tesla superconducting dipole magnet equipped with 3 independent detection systems for X-rays from axion-photon conversions inside the 10 m long magnetic field.…

The new generation of ground-based, large-aperture solar telescopes promises to significantly increase our capabilities to understand the many basic phenomena taking place in the Sun at all atmospheric layers and how they relate to each…

The ESPRESSO spectrograph at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has, since it began science operations in October 2018, revolutionised exoplanet science. The combination of the large VLT mirrors and the high resolution and stability of the…

The Solar Spectroscopy Explorer (SSE) concept is conceived as a scalable mission, with two to four instruments and a strong focus on coronal spectroscopy. In its core configuration it is a small strategic mission ($250-500M) built around a…

ASTEP South is the first phase of the ASTEP project that aims to determine the quality of Dome C as a site for future photometric searches for transiting exoplanets and discover extrasolar planets from the Concordia base in Antarctica.…