Related papers: GREGOR: Optics Redesign and Updates from 2018-2020
We briefly discuss the past, present, and future state of astronomical science with laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO). We present a tabulation of refereed science papers from LGS AO, amounting to a total of 23 publications as of May…
I review the present status of liquid mirror telescopes. In a nutshell: LMTs do work and several have been built and used. Extensive interferometric tests of liquid mirrors (the largest one having a diameter of 2.5 meters) show diffraction…
The James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, is an infrared observatory of novel design: deployable, with active optics, fully open to space for radiative cooling and orbiting the Lagrange point no. 2. This article explains the…
The operation of the ANU 2.3m telescope transitioned from classically scheduled remote observing to fully autonomous queue scheduled observing in March 2023. The instrument currently supported is WiFeS, a visible-light low-resolution…
The SPIFFI integral field spectrometer is operated as a subunit of the AO instrument SINFONI on the VLT. It will be upgraded and reused as SPIFFIER in the new VLT instrument ERIS. In January 2016 an early upgrade of several optical…
ERIS is an instrument that will both extend and enhance the fundamental diffraction limited imaging and spectroscopy capability for the VLT. It will replace two instruments that are now being maintained beyond their operational lifetimes,…
Extremely large telescopes (ELTs) are considered worldwide to be one of the highest priorities in ground-based astronomy. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is developing an ELT that will have a 39 m main mirror and will be the largest…
We present the characteristics and the current status of the "Telescopio Infrarosso del Gornergrat" (Tirgo), the national infrared facility operating from the beginning of the 80s over the swiss alps. We describe its current instrumentation…
The German / British gravitational wave detector GEO 600 is in the process of being upgraded. The upgrading process of GEO 600, called GEO-HF, will concentrate on the improvement of the sensitivity for high frequency signals and the…
Daily full-disk observations of the solar photosphere and chromosphere started at Meudon Observatory in 1908. After a review of the scientific context and the historical background, we describe the instrumental characteristics and…
Design and construction of the instruments for ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) began in 2015. We present here a brief overview of the status of the ELT Instrumentation Plan. Dedicated articles on each instrument are presented…
In 2015/16, the photomultiplier cameras of the H.E.S.S. Cherenkov telescopes CT1-4 have undergone a major upgrade. The entire electronics has been replaced, using NECTAr chips for the front-end readout. A new ventilation system has been…
The MAGIC 17m diameter Cherenkov telescope will be upgraded with a second telescope with advanced photon detectors and ultra fast readout within the year 2007. The sensitivity of MAGIC-II, the two telescope system, will be improved by a…
The ESA gamma-ray observatory INTEGRAL, launched on 17 October 2002, continues to produce a wealth of discoveries and new results on compact high energy Galactic objects, nuclear gamma-ray line emission, diffuse line and continuum emission,…
In August 2017, Advanced Virgo joined Advanced LIGO for the end of the O2 run, leading to the first gravitational waves detections with the three-detector network. This paper describes the Advanced Virgo calibration and the gravitational…
The SOUL systems at the Large Bincoular Telescope can be seen such as precursor for the ELT SCAO systems, combining together key technologies such as EMCCD, Pyramid WFS and adaptive telescopes. After the first light of the first upgraded…
Adaptive optics (AO) offers an opportunity to stabilize an image and maximize the spatial resolution achievable by ground based telescopes by removing the distortions due to the atmosphere. Typically, the deformable mirror in an AO system…
A status report of the second phase of the MAGIC ground-based gamma-ray facility (as of October 2009) is presented. MAGIC became recently a stereoscopic Cherenkov observatory with the inauguration of its second telescope, MAGIC-II, which is…
In the distant past, telescopes were known, first and foremost, for the sizes of their apertures. Advances in technology are now enabling astronomers to build extremely powerful instruments to the extent that instruments have now achieved…
Advanced Virgo is the project to upgrade the Virgo interferometric detector of gravitational waves, with the aim of increasing the number of observable galaxies (and thus the detection rate) by three orders of magnitude. The project is now…