Related papers: Seeing-limited imaging sky surveys -- small vs. la…
The Large Array Survey Telescope (LAST) is designed to survey the variable and transient sky at high temporal cadence. The array is comprised of 48 F/2.2 telescopes of 27.9cm aperture, coupled to full-frame backside-illuminated cooled CMOS…
A large wide-field telescope and camera with optical throughput over 200 m^2 deg^2 -- a factor of 50 beyond what we currently have -- would enable the detection of faint moving or bursting optical objects: from Earth threatening asteroids…
To explore capabilities of moderate-size optical telescopes in surveys, the set of 9 new wide-field designs having apertures up to 1 m is considered. All but one systems have angular field of view in a range 3.5-10 degrees and flat focal…
The construction of the James Webb Space Telescope has brought attention to infrared astronomy and cosmology. The potential information about our universe to be gained by this mission and future infrared telescopes is staggering, but…
The Large Array Survey Telescope (LAST) is a wide-field telescope designed to explore the variable and transient sky with a high cadence and to be a test-bed for cost-effective telescope design. A LAST node is composed of 48 (32 already…
We present an observational approach for the independent detection of the early optical emission of long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). For this purpose, we explore the potential of the Large Array Survey Telescope (LAST). This array of small…
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…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is conceived as an 8.4-m telescope with CCD or CMOS focal plane covering most of a field 0.6 m in diameter, the latter exceeding the size of the largest photographic plates ever used in astronomy.…
As telescope facilities become increasingly more capable they also become increasingly complex and require additional resources to operate. This is particularly true for the current and future generations of "software defined telescopes"…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is designed to provide an unprecedented optical imaging dataset that will support investigations of our Solar System, Galaxy and Universe, across half the sky and over ten years of repeated observation.…
We study the fundamental limits of detection for astrophysical observations in the far infrared. Understanding these fundamental limits is critical to the planning and analysis of experiments in this region. We specifically characterize the…
We explore scaling relations for the information carried by individual events, and how that information accumulates in catalogs like those from ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. For a variety of situations, the larger number of…
Telescope arrays are receiving increasing attention due to their promise of higher resource utilization, greater sky survey area, and higher frequency of full space-time monitoring than single telescopes. Compared with the ordinary…
The optical observations of wide fields of view encounter the problem of selection of best exposure time. As there are usually plenty of objects observed simultaneously, the quality of photometry of the brightest ones is always better than…
Current large-aperture cosmic microwave background (CMB) telescopes have nearly maximized the number of detectors that can be illuminated while maintaining diffraction-limited image quality. The polarization-sensitive detector arrays being…
The frequency at which a large space telescope's (e.g. NGST's) detector chips are read, or the sample rate, is tightly coupled to many hardware and operational aspects of the telescope's instrument and data handling elements. In this paper…
The present generation of weak lensing surveys will be superseded by surveys run from space with much better sky coverage and high level of signal to noise ratio, such as SNAP. However, removal of any systematics or noise will remain a…
The next generation of galaxy surveys will observe millions of galaxies over large volumes of the universe. These surveys are expensive both in time and cost, raising questions regarding the optimal investment of this time and money. In…
Chopping observations with a tip-tilt secondary mirror have conventionally been used in ground-based mid-infrared observations. However, it is not practical for next generation large telescopes to have a large tip-tilt mirror that moves at…
A wide field space-based imaging telescope is necessary to fully exploit the technique of observing dark matter via weak gravitational lensing. This first paper in a three part series outlines the survey strategies and relevant instrumental…