Related papers: Correcting Sky Quality Meter measurements for agin…
Defocus blur is a physical consequence of the optical sensors used in most cameras. Although it can be used as a photographic style, it is commonly viewed as an image degradation modeled as the convolution of a sharp image with a…
We describe a program to measure surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distances to galaxies observed in the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS), a photometric imaging survey covering $104~deg^2$ of the Virgo cluster in the…
The weak distortions produced by gravitational lensing in the images of background galaxies provide a method to measure directly the distribution of mass in the universe. However this technique requires high precision measurements of the…
Weak gravitational lensing has the potential to constrain cosmological parameters to high precision. However, as shown by the Shear TEsting Programmes (STEP) and GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing (GREAT) Challenges, measuring galaxy…
Inferring spatial curvature of the Universe with high-fidelity is a longstanding interest in cosmology. However, the strong degeneracy between dark energy equation-of-state parameter $w$ and curvature density parameter $\Omega_{\rm K}$ has…
With a sky brightness monitor in Xinglong station of National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), we collected data from 22 dark clear nights and 90 lunar nights. We first measured the sky brightness variation with time in dark…
Deflection of light along the optical path is a major source of image degradation for ground-based telescopes. Methods have been developed to measure upper atmospheric seeing based on models of the turbulence in the atmosphere, but due to…
The complete 10-year survey from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will image $\sim$ 20,000 square degrees of sky in six filter bands every few nights, bringing the final survey depth to $r\sim27.5$, with over 4 billion well…
Focal ratio degradation measurements of optical fibers for the PMAS integral field instrument have been performed using the Photometric Testbench of the Potsdam Astrophysical Institute (AIP). An effort has been made to obtain sufficiently…
We describe the problems met using the telescopes of Merate Observatory, the branch of Brera Astronomical Observatory. From the point of view of the data analysis, we discuss how to introduce a satisfactory correction of the variable…
We apply the sky brightness modelling technique introduced and developed by Roy Garstang to high-resolution DMSP-OLS satellite measurements of upward artificial light flux and to GTOPO30 digital elevation data in order to predict the…
A study for the comprehensive information of current UV exposure for the area of Germany, based on the method for near real time calculation of UV Index maps used in the framework of the Austrian UV Monitoring Network, is presented. For the…
Artificial light at night has affected most of the natural nocturnal landscapes worldwide and the subsequent light pollution has diverse effects on flora, fauna and human well-being. To evaluate the environmental impacts of light pollution,…
A new astronomical observatory in southeastern Indonesia is currently under construction. This Timau National Observatory will host a 3.8-metre telescope for optical and near-infrared observations. To support the operation and planning, the…
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new experiment that aims to measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in temperature and polarization. SO will measure the polarized sky over a large range of microwave frequencies and angular scales…
Weak lensing by large-scale structure provides a direct measurement of matter fluctuations in the universe. We report a measurement of this `cosmic shear' based on 271 WFPC2 archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope Medium Deep Survey…
Atmospheric optical turbulence seriously limits the performance of high angular resolution instruments. An 8-night campaign of measurements was carried out at the LAMOST site in 2011, to characterize the optical turbulence. Two instruments…
Direct imaging of exoplanets by reflected starlight is extremely challenging due to the large luminosity ratio to the primary star. Wave-front control is a critical technique to attenuate the speckle noise in order to achieve an extremely…
The detection of atmospheric fluorescence light from extensive air showers has become a powerful tool for accurate measurements of the energy and mass of ultra-high energy cosmic ray particles. Employing large area imaging telescopes with…
Cosmic shear measurements rely on our ability to measure and correct the Point Spread Function (PSF) of the observations. This PSF is measured using stars in the field, which give a noisy measure at random points in the field. Using Wiener…