Related papers: Diffraction-dominated observational astronomy
The fields of view of Extremely Large Telescopes will contain vast numbers of spatial sampling elements (spaxels) as their Adaptive Optics systems approach the diffraction limit over wide fields. Since this will exceed the detection…
Future large space- or ground-based telescopes will offer the resolution and sensitivity to probe the habitable zone of a large sample of nearby stars for exo-Earth imaging. To this end, such facilities are expected to be equipped with a…
Extra-solar planets direct imaging is now a reality with the deployment and commissioning of the first generation of specialized ground-based instruments (GPI, SPHERE, P1640 and SCExAO). These systems allow of planets $ 10 ^ 7 $ times…
Conventional techniques that measure rapid time variations are inefficient or inadequate to discover and observe rapidly pulsating astronomical sources. It is therefore conceivable that there exist some classes of objects pulsating with…
Spatial phase-referencing in dual-field optical interferometry is reconsidered. Our analysis is based on the 2-sample variance of the differential phase between target and reference star. We show that averaging over time of the atmospheric…
When light from a distant source object, like a galaxy or a supernova, travels towards us, it is deflected by massive objects that lie on its path. When the mass density of the deflecting object exceeds a certain threshold, multiple, highly…
High-contrast imaging from space must overcome two major noise sources to successfully detect a terrestrial planet angularly close to its parent star: photon noise from diffracted star light, and speckle noise from star light scattered by…
Detecting the angles and orbits of remote targets precisely has been playing crucial roles in astrophysical research. Due to the resolution limitations imposed by the Airy disk in a single telescope, optical interferometric schemes with at…
A probabilistic technique for the joint estimation of background and sources with the aim of detecting faint and extended celestial objects is described. Bayesian probability theory is applied to gain insight into the coexistence of…
A trade-off between speed and information controls our understanding of astronomical objects. Fast-to-acquire photometric observations provide global properties, while costly and time-consuming spectroscopic measurements enable a better…
In long adaptive optics corrected exposures, exoplanet detections are currently limited by speckle noise originating from the telescope and instrument optics, and it is expected that such noise will also limit future high-contrast imaging…
Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) yields measurement parameters (number of molecules, diffusion time) that characterize the concentration and kinetics of fluorescent molecules within a supposedly known observation volume. Absolute…
Direct detection of exoplanets requires high dynamic range imaging. Coronagraphs could be the solution, but their performance in space is limited by wavefront errors (manufacturing errors on optics, temperature variations, etc.), which…
It has been posited that lunar eclipse observations may help predict the in-transit signature of Earth-like extrasolar planets. However, a comparative analysis of the two phenomena addressing in detail the transport of stellar light through…
Spatially resolving two incoherent point sources whose separation is well below the diffraction limit dictated by classical optics has recently been shown possible using techniques that decompose the incoming radiation into orthogonal…
We show that the errors due to atmospheric refraction are present in the magnitudes determined with the Difference Images Analysis method. In case of single, unblended stars the size of the effect agrees with the theoretical prediction. But…
Interference with atomic and molecular matter waves is a rich branch of atomic physics and quantum optics. It started with atom diffraction from crystal surfaces and the separated oscillatory fields technique used in atomic clocks. Atom…
Entangled-photon coincidence imaging is a method to nonlocally image an object by transmitting a pair of entangled photons through the object and a reference optical system, respectively. The image of the object can be extracted from the…
Polarimetry is one of the keys to enhanced direct imaging of exoplanets. Not only does it deliver a differential observable providing extra contrast, but when coupled with spectroscopy, it also reveals valuable information on the…
Diffraction tomography is an inverse scattering technique used to reconstruct the spatial distribution of the material properties of a weakly scattering object. The object is exposed to radiation, typically light or ultrasound, and the…