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With sub-microarcsecond angular accuracy, the \theia telescope will be capable of revealing the architectures of nearby exoplanetary systems down to the mass of Earth. This research addresses the challenges inherent in space astrometry…
3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, offers a new vision for optical fabrication in term of achievable optical quality and reduction of weight and cost. In this paper we describe two different ways to use this technique in the…
In the present paper, we consider the optical design of a zoom system for the active refocusing in laser guide star wavefront sensors. The system is designed according to the specifications coming from the Extremely Large Telescope…
Microscope objectives achieve near diffraction-limited performance only when used under the conditions they are designed for. In non-standard geometries, such as thick cover slips or curved surfaces, severe aberrations arise, inevitably…
It is widely believed that adaptive optics only has a role in correcting turbulent wavefronts on large telescopes using very bright reference stars. Unfortunately these are very scarce and many astronomical targets require wavefront…
A modified version of the folded aplanatic Gregory telescope equipped with a spherical two-lens corrector is proposed for observations requiring a high signal-to-noise ratio. The basic telescope model has an aperture of 400 mm (f/3.0), its…
Background. Relative astrometry at or below the micro-arcsec level with a 1m class space telescope has been repeatedly proposed as a tool for exo-planet detection and characterization, as well as for several topics at the forefront of…
The approach of Observational Astronomy is mainly aimed at the construction of larger aperture telescopes, more sensitive detectors and broader wavelength coverage. Certainly fruitful, this approach turns out to be not completely fulfilling…
Cherenkov Telescopes are equipped with optical dishes of large diameter -- in general based on segmented mirrors -- with typical angular resolution of a few arc-minutes. To evaluate the mirror's quality specific metrological systems are…
(Abridged) Typically large telescope construction and operation costs scale up faster than their collecting area. This slows scientific progress, making it expensive and complicated to increase telescope size. A metric that represents the…
This paper discusses some of the challenges of spectro-polarimetric observations with a large aperture solar telescope such as the ATST or the EST. The observer needs to reach a compromise among spatial and spectral resolution, time…
NRT is an international project to build and operate the world's largest robotic telescope. The telescope will have a segmented primary mirror with an equivalent diameter of 4 m, a set of simultaneously mounted optical and near-infrared…
Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology can provide for deformable mirrors (DMs) with excellent performance within a favorable economy of scale. Large MEMS-based astronomical adaptive optics (AO) systems such as the Gemini Planet…
Cubesats present unique opportunities for observational astronomy in the modern era. They are useful in observing difficult-to-access wavelength regions and long-term monitoring of interesting astronomical sources. However, conventional…
The U.S. Naval Observatory Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) project aims at a highly accurate (5 mas), ground-based, all-sky survey. Requirements are presented for the optics and telescope for this 0.85 m aperture, 4.5 degree diameter…
We report on a compact, ultrahigh-vacuum compatible optical assembly to create large-scale, two-dimensional optical lattices for use in experiments with ultracold atoms. The assembly consists of an octagon-shaped spacer made from…
We propose the segmented Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT/GTM),as the largest spatial light modulator capable of producing vortex beams of integer topological charge. This observing mode could be applied for direct exoplanet searches in the…
The availability and performance of laser-based adaptive optics (AO) systems are strongly dependent on the power and quality of the laser beam before being projected to the sky. Frequent and time-consuming alignment procedures are usually…
In optical astronomical telescopes, the primary baffle is a tube-like structure centering in the hole of the primary mirror and the vanes usually locate inside the baffle, improving the suppression of stray light. They are the most common…
This paper describes a concept for the high-accuracy absolute calibration of the instrumental polarization introduced by the primary mirror of a large-aperture telescope. This procedure requires a small aperture with polarization…