Related papers: Detectability of Artificial Lights from Proxima b

The technique of transmission spectroscopy -- the variation of the planetary radius with wavelength due to opacity sources in the planet's terminator region -- has been to date one of the most successful in the characterization of exoplanet…

The statistical power of weak lensing measurements is principally driven by the number of high redshift galaxies whose shapes are resolved. Conventional wisdom and physical intuition suggest this is optimised by deep imaging at long (red or…

As the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) came online last summer, we entered a new era of astronomy. This new era is supported by data products of unprecedented information content that require novel reduction and analysis techniques.…

Predicting signals in direct dark matter (DM) detection experiments requires an understanding of the astrophysical structure of the local halo. Any uncertainty in this understanding will feed directly into all experimental results. However…

GRB satellites are relatively inefficient detectors of dim hard bursts because they trigger on photon counts, which are number-biased against hard photons. Therefore, for example, given two bursts of identical peak luminosity near the…

The first detected member of a new astronomical class is often not representative of the underlying population, but instead reflects the selection effects of the observing technique that found it. We apply this idea to the first remote…

The direct imaging from the ground of extrasolar planets has become today a major astronomical and biological focus. This kind of imaging requires simultaneously the use of a dedicated high performance Adaptive Optics [AO] system and a…

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has extended the frontier of galaxy detection to redshifts z>11, finding a high abundance of UV-bright sources that challenge theoretical models. However, most current results come from just a few…

We analyze the impact of future hard X-ray observations on the search for indirect signatures of particle dark matter in large extragalactic systems such as nearby clusters or groups of galaxies. We argue that the hard X-ray energy band…

While the direct detection of the dark-matter particle remains very challenging, the nature of dark matter could be possibly constrained by comparing the observed abundance and properties of small-scale sub-galactic mass structures with…

Direct detection of WIMP dark matter candidates has to face many difficult challenges. In particular, it requires an extremely high level of background rejection. The only way out seems to be particle identification which, for experiments…

The WFIRST microlensing mission will measure precise light curves and relative parallaxes for millions of stars, giving it the potential to characterize short-period transiting planets all along the line of sight and into the galactic…

I discuss the current low Earth orbit artificial satellite population and show that the proposed `megaconstellation' of circa 12,000 Starlink internet satellites would dominate the lower part of Earth orbit, below 600 km, with a…

In less than a year, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will inherit the mantle of being the world's pre-eminent infrared observatory. JWST will carry with it an Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) as one of the supported operational…

We discuss the utility of a low resolution prism as a component of a Multi-Object Spectrometer for NASA's proposed Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST). Low resolution prism spectroscopy permits simultaneous observation of the 0.6-5micron…

The detection of Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars, and their spectroscopic characterization in a search for biosignatures, requires starlight suppression that exceeds the current best ground-based performance by…

Eclipse exoplanet spectroscopy has yielded detection of H_2O, CH_4, CO_2 and CO in the atmosphere of hot jupiters and neptunes. About 40 large terrestrial planets are announced or confirmed, two of which are transiting, and another deemed…

Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…

Direct imaging of extra-solar planets has now become a reality, especially with the deployment and commissioning of the first generation of specialized ground-based instruments such as the GPI, SPHERE, P1640 and SCExAO. These systems will…

The Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) offers the first opportunity to use integral-field spectroscopy from space at near-infrared wavelengths. More specifically, NIRSpec's integral-field unit can…