Related papers: Universal focal reducer for small telescopes

We describe the scheme and design features of the new IFU unit (Integral Field Unit) meant to perform integral-field spectroscopy as a part of SCORPIO-2 focal reducer, which is mounted in the prime focus of the 6-m telescope of the Special…

Polarised light from astronomical targets can yield a wealth of information about their source radiation mechanisms, and about the geometry of the scattered light regions. Optical observations, of both the linear and circular polarisation…

The ASTEP project aims at detecting and characterizing transiting planets from Dome C, Antarctica, and qualifying this site for photometry in the visible. The first phase of the project, ASTEP South, is a fixed 10 cm diameter instrument…

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope has carried out a survey of the entire Southern Sky at 887.5MHz. The wide area, high angular resolution, and broad bandwidth provided by the low-band Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey…

We present the motivation and early tests for a novel solar instrument that will harness the new High Efficiency Pixel (HEP) Texas Instruments DLP801RE Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) as a reconfigurable spatial light modulator. This…

Context: Current instrument developments at the largest telescopes worldwide have provisions for Multi-Conjugated Adaptive Optics (MCAO) modules. The large field of view and more uniform correction provided by these systems is not only…

Next-generation large segmented mirror telescopes are expected to perform direct imaging and characterization of Earth-like rocky planets, which requires contrast limits of $10^{-7}$ to $10^{-8}$ at wavelengths from I to J band. One…

Near-diffraction limited imaging and spectroscopy in the visible on large (8-10 meter) class telescopes has proved to be beyond the capabilities of current adaptive optics technologies, even when using laser guide stars. The need for high…

A new, inexpensive polarimetric unit has been constructed for the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO) 1.8-m Plaskett telescope. It is implemented as a plug-in module for the telescope's existing Cassegrain spectrograph, and enables…

The Wide-Area Linear Optical Polarimeter (WALOP)-South instrument is an upcoming wide-field and high-accuracy optical polarimeter to be used as a survey instrument for carrying out the Polar-Areas Stellar Imaging in Polarization High…

We present the optical design of OPTICAM-ARG, a multi-channel instrument for the simultaneous acquisition of images in three spectral bands at the Cassegrain focus of an f/8.5 telescope, covering the 0.35 to 1.00 um wavelength range. The…

Astronomical telescopes suffer from a tradeoff between field of view (FoV) and image resolution: increasing the FoV leads to an optical field that is under-sampled by the science camera. This work presents a novel computational imaging…

The one-meter telescope-reflector `Saturn' (D=1 m, F = 4 m) was partially renovated at the Pulkovo observatory at the end of 2014. The telescope was equipped by CCD camera S2C with 14x14 arcmin field of view and 824 mas per pix scale. The…

We present results from commissioning observations of the mid-IR instrument, MIRAC-5, on the 6.5-m MMT telescope. MIRAC-5 is a novel ground-based instrument that utilizes a state-of-the-art GeoSnap (2 - 13 microns) HgCdTe detector with…

One of the well-known problems of producing instruments for Extremely Large Telescopes is that their size (and hence cost) scales rapidly with telescope aperture. To try to break this relation alternative new technologies have been…

Euclid is a space telescope currently developed in the framework of the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Program. It addresses fundamental cosmological questions related to dark matter and dark energy. The lens system of one of the two…

The Telescope to Observe Planetary Systems (TOPS) is a proposed space mission to image in the visible (0.4-0.9 micron) planetary systems of nearby stars simultaneously in 16 spectral bands (resolution R~20). For the ~10 most favorable…

A new generation of optical intensity interferometers are emerging in recent years taking advantage of the existing infrastructure of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). The MAGIC SII (Stellar Intensity Interferometer) in La…

Binospec is a high throughput, 370 to 1000 nm, imaging spectrograph that addresses two adjacent 8' by 15' fields of view. Binospec was commissioned in late 2017 at the f/5 focus of the 6.5m MMT and is now available to all MMT observers.…

We report on the results of calibrating and simulating the instrumental polarization properties of the ESO VLT adaptive optics camera system NAOS/CONICA (NACO) in the Ks-band. We use the Stokes/Mueller formalism for metallic reflections to…