Related papers: The commissioning phase
ESPRESSO is a new high-resolution ultra-stable spectrograph for the VLT, which had its first light on Telescope on November 27th, 2017. The instrument is installed in the Combined Coud\'{e} Laboratory and linked to the 4 Units of Telescope…
The Large Hadron Collider will commence operations in the latter half of 2008. The plans of the LHC experiments ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb are described. The scenario for progression of luminosity and the strategies of these 4 experiments…
The Planck satellite in orbit mission ended in October 2013. Between the end of Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) routine mission operations and the satellite decommissioning, a dedicated test was also performed to measure the Planck telescope…
India's largest size 3.6 meter Devashal optical telescope (DOT) was commissioned in the year 2016, though the idea of building it germinated way back in the year 1976. This article provides research accounts as well as glimpses of its…
XMM-Newton was launched into space on a highly eccentric 48 hour orbit on December 10th 1999. XMM-Newton is now in its fifth year of operation and has been an outstanding success, observing the Cosmos with imaging, spectroscopy and timing…
We report the design, fabrication and installation of a 'Twin Telescope' at Kodaikanal Observatory intended to augment the ongoing synoptic observations of the Sun that has been carried out since 1904. The telescope uses a 15 cm objective…
Precise time scale is the universal base for all measurements. Here we report the deployment of a compact and transportable optical clock to a timekeeping institution and steering an active hydrogen maser to generate an optical time scale,…
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 "Bonn University Simultaneous CAmera" (BUSCA) is a CCD camera system which allows simultaneous direct imaging of the same sky area in four colors. The optics are designed for an f/8 beam and four 4Kx4K CCDs with 15m pixels covering a…
NASA's Kepler mission will fly a photometer based on a wide-field Schmidt camera with a 0.95 m aperture, staring at a single field continuously for at least 4 years. Although the mission's principal aim is to locate transiting extrasolar…
On April 28, 2016, the Lomonosov satellite, equipped with a number of scientific instruments, was launched into orbit. Here we present briefly some of the results obtained with the first orbital telescope of extreme energy cosmic rays TUS…
The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) instrument is a major component of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. Since beginning normal science operations on 1 May 2010, HMI has operated with remarkable continuity, e.g.…
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument is a critical technology demonstrator for NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory. With a predicted visible-light flux ratio detection limit of 1E-8 or better, it will be capable of…
Here we describe the first light of the novel 9-channel wide-field optical monitoring system with sub-second temporal resolution, Mini-MegaTORTORA, which is being tested now at Special Astrophysical Observatory on Russian Caucasus. The…
The Micro-X sounding rocket is a NASA funded X-ray telescope payload that completed its first flight on July 22, 2018. This event marked the first operation of Transition Edge Sensors (TESs) and their SQUID-based multiplexing readout system…
The Micro-Imaging Dust Analysis System (MIDAS) atomic force microscope (AFM) onboard the Rosetta orbiter was the first such instrument launched into space in 2004. Designed only a few years after the technique was invented, MIDAS is…
The scientific impact of a facility is the most important measure of its success. Monitoring and analysing the scientific return can help to modify and optimise operations and adapt to the changing needs of scientific research. The…
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a new instrument currently under construction for the Mayall 4-m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. It will consist of a wide-field optical corrector with a 3.2 degree diameter…
Since its launch in April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has produced an increasing flow of scientific results. The large number of refereed publications based on HST data allows a detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of this…
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is the first focusing high energy (3-79 keV) X-ray observatory operating for four years from low Earth orbit. The X-ray detector arrays are located on the spacecraft bus with the optics…