Related papers: The NOAO Mid-Scale Observatories
The Observatory Science Operations (OSO) subsystem of the SKAO consists of a range of complex tools which will be used to propose, design, schedule and execute observations. Bridging the gap between the science and telescope domains is the…
Several astronomical surveys aimed at the investigation of the extragalactic components were carried out in order to map systematically the universe and its constituents. An excellent level of detail is needed, and it is possible only using…
Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) has deployed a network of ten identical 1-m telescopes to four locations. The global coverage and flexibility of the LCO network makes it ideal for discovery, follow-up, and characterization of all Solar System…
We describe the remote facilities operated by the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA), a consortium of colleges and universities in the US partnered with Lowell Observatory, the Chilean National Telescope Allocation…
The Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) is located on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, at an altitude of 4.2 km. The existing suite of facility heterodyne receivers covering the submillimeter band is rapidly aging and in need of replacement.…
The prototype Robo-AO system at the Palomar Observatory 1.5-m telescope is the world's first fully automated laser adaptive optics instrument. Scientific operations commenced in June 2012 and more than 12,000 observations have since been…
Seven years ago, with the encouragement of the NSF and AURA, NOAO requested proposals from the community to partner with the national observatory to improve instrumentation and/or telescope capabilities at KPNO and CTIO. Of the proposals…
The Calar Alto Observatory, located at 2168m height above the sea level in continental Europe, holds a significant number of astronomical telescopes and experiments, covering a large range of the electromagnetic domain, from gamma-ray to…
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…
The future generation of telescopes will be equipped with multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) systems in order to obtain high angular resolution over large fields of view. MCAO comes in two flavors: star- and layer-oriented. Existing…
In the last few years, new Adaptive Optics [AO] techniques have emerged to answer new astronomical challenges: Ground-Layer AO [GLAO] and Multi-Conjugate AO [MCAO] to access a wider Field of View [FoV], Multi-Object AO [MOAO] for the…
Doing astronomy with photons of energies in excess of a GeV has turned out to be extremely challenging. Efforts are underway to develop instruments that may push astronomy to wavelengths smaller than $10^{-14}$~cm by mapping the sky in high…
The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) is an international collaboration to build and operate a 4 m diameter fully robotic telescope. The telescope will take advantage of the superb atmospheric conditions at the Observatory of the Roque de los…
With the epochal first detection of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star (NS) merger with the GW170817 event, and its direct confirmation that NS-NS mergers are significant sources of the of the r-process nucleosynthesis of heavy…
We have built an Atmospheric Transmission Monitoring Camera (aTmCam), which consists of four telescopes and detectors each with a narrow-band filter that monitors the brightness of suitable standard stars. Each narrowband filter is selected…
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a group of modern telescopes dedicated to observing the polarized cosmic microwave background (CMB), transients, and more. The Observatory consists of four telescopes and instruments, with over 60,000…
MOONS is the new Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph currently under construction for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO. This remarkable instrument combines, for the first time, the collecting power of an 8-m telescope,…
Although the field of neutrino astronomy has blossomed in the last decade, physicists have struggled to fully map the high-energy neutrino sky. TAMBO, a mountain-based neutrino observatory, aims to solve that issue -- and find clues of new…
The Australian Astronomical Observatory operates the Anglo-Australian Telescope and the United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope in Australia, as well as coordinating access for the Australian community to the Gemini, Magellan, and other…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will be the next-generation major ground-based gamma-ray observatory. It will be made up of two large arrays of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), with one site in the Northern…