Related papers: A Shiny New Method for SETI: Specular Reflections …
Many real-world materials are characterized by a glittery appearance. Reproducing this effect in physically based renderings is a challenging problem due to its discrete nature, especially in real-time applications which require a…
The absolute reflectance of a reflector and its point spread function are the key parameters of a telescope for measuring light flux. Typically, one is using low-cost technologies for producing mirrors for the needs of astro-particle…
The Sunrise balloon-borne solar observatory consists of a 1m aperture Gregory telescope, a UV filter imager, an imaging vector polarimeter, an image stabilization system and further infrastructure. The first science flight of Sunrise…
Megaconstellations of thousands to tens of thousands of artificial satellites (satcons) are rapidly being developed and launched. These satcons will have negative consequences for observational astronomy research, and are poised to…
Mirror matter type dark matter can exist on the Earth's surface, potentially in enhanced concentrations at various anomalous impact sites. Mirror matter fragments can draw in heat from the ordinary matter environment, radiate mirror photons…
Artificial satellites orbiting around the Earth, under certain conditions, result to be visible even to the naked eye. The phenomenon of light pollution jeopardises the researching activities of the astronomical community: traces left by…
Detecting compact objects by means of their gravitational lensing effect on an observed companion in a binary system has already been suggested almost four decades ago. However, these predictions were made even before the first observations…
The population of artificial satellites and space debris orbiting the Earth imposes non-negligible constraints on both space operations and ground-based optical and radio astronomy. The ongoing deployment of several satellite…
RefPlanets is a guaranteed time observation (GTO) programme that uses the Zurich IMaging POLarimeter (ZIMPOL) of SPHERE/VLT for a blind search for exoplanets in wavelengths from 600-900 nm. The goals of this study are the characterization…
An uncommon double-ray scenario of light resonant scattering by a periodic metasurface is proposed to provide strong non-specular reflection. The metasurface is constracted as an array of silicon nanodisks placed on thin silica-on-metal…
Gravitation could modulate the interstellar scintillation of pulsars in a way that is analogous to refractive interstellar scintillation (RISS). While RISS occurs when a large ionized cloud crosses the pulsar line-of-sight, gravitational…
During reionization, a fraction of galactic Ly$\alpha$ emission is scattered in the intergalactic medium (IGM) and appears as a diffuse light extending megaparsecs from the source. We investigate how to probe the properties of the early…
The identification of an extrasolar planet as Earth-like will depend on the detection of atmospheric signatures or surface non-uniformities. In this paper we present spatially unresolved flux light curves of Earth for the purpose of…
Detection of signals from a possible extrasolar technological civilization is one of the challenging efforts of science. In this work, we propose using natural telescopes made of single or binary gravitational lensing systems to magnify…
Astronomical light echoes, the time-dependent light scattered by dust in the vicinity of varying objects, have been recognized for over a century. Initially, their utility was thought to be confined to mapping out the three-dimensional…
In this paper, we study the problem of reproducing the world lighting from a single image of an object covered with random specular microfacets on the surface. We show that such reflectors can be interpreted as a randomized mapping from the…
I show that a dedicated space telescope with a meter-size aperture can detect numerous interstellar objects, 10-m in diameter, that pass within ~20 degrees from the Sun. Separating the emitted thermal radiation from the reflection of…
The afterglow of a cosmological Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) should appear on the sky as a narrow emission ring of radius 3x10^{16}cm(t/day)^{5/8} which expands faster than light. After a day, the ring radius is comparable to the Einstein radius…
The radiation of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) reflects from the Moon and Sun. If a reflection is detected, the time interval between the direct and reflected signals constrains the source to a narrow arc on the sky. If both Lunar and Solar…
Ambitious studies of Earth-like extrasolar planets are outlined in the context of an exploration initiative for a return to the Earth's Moon. Two mechanism for linearly polarizing light reflected from Earth-like planets are discussed: 1)…