Related papers: MARCOT Pathfinder at Calar Alto Progress Report

Photonic lanterns are waveguide devices enabling high throughput single mode spectroscopy and high angular resolution. We aim to present the first on-sky demonstration of a photonic lantern (PL) operating in visible light, to measure its…

We present an experiment based on a fibered Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The aim is to familiarize students with fibered optics and interferometry, and to improve their understanding of optical amplification. The laboratory project has two…

The optical module of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope is an innovative, multi-faceted large area photodetection module. It contains 31 three-inch photomultiplier tubes in a single 0.44 m diameter pressure-resistant glass sphere. The module is…

Resolving fine details of astronomical objects provides critical insights into their underlying physical processes. This drives in part the desire to construct ever-larger telescopes and interferometer arrays and to observe at shorter…

The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is an array of wide-field optical telescopes, designed to exploit new discoveries from the next generation of gravitational wave detectors (LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA), study rapidly evolving…

XMS is a multi-channel wide-field spectrograph designed for the prime focus of the 3.5m Calar-Alto telescope. The instrument is composed by four quadrants, each of which contains a spectrograph channel. An innovative mechanical design -at…

The HERMES high-resolution spectrograph project aims at exploiting the specific potential of small but flexible telescopes in observational astrophysics. The optimised optical design of the spectrograph is based on the well-proven concept…

Integrated optics are used to achieve astronomical interferometry inside robust and compact materials, improving the instrument's stability and sensitivity. In order to perform differential phase measurements at the H$\alpha$ line (656.3…

TolTEC is a new camera being built for the 50-meter Large Millimeter-wave Telescope (LMT) in Puebla, Mexico to survey distant galaxies and star-forming regions in the Milky Way. The optical design simultaneously couples the field of view…

The KM3NeT/ARCA high energy neutrino telescope is currently under construction in the Mediterranean sea. The detector will consist of two blocks of instrumented structures and will have a size of the order of a cubic-kilometer. In this work…

Line intensity mapping (LIM) is a new technique for tracing the global properties of galaxies over cosmic time. Detection of the very faint signals from redshifted carbon monoxide (CO), a tracer of star formation, pushes the limits of what…

The next generation of massively multiplexed multi-object spectrographs (DESpec, SUMIRE, BigBOSS, 4MOST, HECTOR) demand fast, efficient and affordable spectrographs, with higher resolutions (R = 3000-5000) than current designs. Beam-size is…

We describe an initiative to build and use the Dark Energy Spectrometer (DESpec), a wide-field spectroscopic survey instrument for the Blanco 4 meter telescope at Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. A new system with…

The demonstration of efficient single-mode fiber (SMF) coupling is a key requirement for the development of a compact, ultra-precise radial velocity (RV) spectrograph. iLocater is a next generation instrument for the Large Binocular…

The major cornerstone of future ground-based astronomy is imaging and spectroscopy at the diffraction limit using adaptive optics. To exploit the potential of current AO systems, we have begun a survey around bright stars to study…

Automated decision-making is becoming key for automated characterization including electron and scanning probe microscopies and nano indentation. Most machine learning driven workflows optimize a single predefined objective and tend to…

The MACHO project is a search for dark matter in the form of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs). The project has photometrically monitored tens of millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and…

In the era of high-angular resolution astronomical instrumentation, where long and very long baseline interferometers (constituted by many, $\sim$ 20 or more, telescopes) are expected to work not only in the millimeter and submillimeter…

Currently the standard light sensors for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes are the classical photo multiplier tubes that are using bialkali photo cathodes. About eight years ago we initiated an improvement program with the Photo…

HERMES-Pathfinder is a constellation of six 3U nano-satellites hosting simple but innovative X-ray detectors for determining the positions of, and monitoring cosmic high-energy transients such as gamma-ray bursts and the electromagnetic…