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We present revised point-spread functions (PSFs) for the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). These PSFs provide a robust estimate of the light diffracted by the meshes holding the entrance and…
Direct imaging of exoplanets requires very high contrast levels, which are obtained using coronagraphs. But residual quasi-static aberrations create speckles in the focal plane downstream of the coronagraph which mask the planet. This…
In a previous paper we described a method of estimating the single-measurement bias to be expected in astrometric observations of targets in crowded fields with the future Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). That study was based on a…
First results of multi-wavelength measurements of the twilight sky background using all-sky camera with RGB-color CCD conducted in spring and summer of 2016 in central Russia (55.2 deg N, 37.5 deg E) are discussed. They show the effect of…
The Earth's atmosphere is comprised of turbulent layers that result in speckled and blurry images from ground-based visible and infrared observations. Adaptive Optics (AO) systems are employed to measure the perturbed wavefront with a…
We report the characterization of an achromatic focusing metasurface at oblique incident angles. We show that in addition to the inherent off-axis aberrations that occurs due to the hyperbolic phase profile of the metasurface, the focusing…
Cosmic shear requires high precision measurement of galaxy shapes in the presence of the observational Point Spread Function (PSF) that smears out the image. The PSF must therefore be known for each galaxy to a high accuracy. However, for…
A general method for tight focusing of waves, based on compensation of the angular spectrum, is established. We apply the method to monochromatic, polychromatic and diffusive waves. Diffusive and monochromatic waves may form spatially…
Metasurfaces have the potential to miniaturize and improve the performance of any optical element, with applications spanning telecommunications, computing and wearable optics. However, the ability to retain functionality over a continuous,…
The spectral resolution of a dispersive spectrograph is dependent on the width of the entrance slit. This means that astronomical spectrographs trade-off throughput with spectral resolving power. Recently, optical guided-wave transitions…
Nowadays, tens of satellites carry hyperspectral spectrometers. Such instruments allow decomposing the light that exits the atmosphere from its top into hundreds to thousands of contiguous spectral channels. By analysis of the light…
We present an investigation of the horizon and its effect on global 21-cm observations and analysis. We find that the horizon cannot be ignored when modeling low frequency observations. Even if the sky and antenna beam are known exactly,…
As the frontier of precision astronomical photometry continues to advance, correcting for time-variable atmospheric transmission becomes increasingly important. We describe an observational approach to monitoring optical attenuation due to…
Accurate astrometry and photometry of saturated and coronagraphic point spread functions (PSFs) are fundamental to both ground- and space-based high contrast imaging projects. For ground-based adaptive optics imaging, differential…
We investigate the ellipticity of the point-spread function (PSF) produced by imaging an unresolved source with a telescope, subject to the effects of atmospheric turbulence. It is important to quantify these effects in order to understand…
Modeling the optical point spread function (PSF) is particularly challenging for adaptive optics (AO)-assisted observations owing to the its complex shape and spatial variations. We aim to (i) exhaustively demonstrate the accuracy of a…
Dispersion decomposes compound light into monochromatic components at different spatial locations, which needs to be eliminated in imaging but utilized in spectral detection. Metasurfaces provide a unique path to modulate the dispersion…
Spectra of astronomical targets acquired from ground-based instruments are affected by the atmospheric transmission. The authors and their institutes are developing a web-based service, TAPAS (Transmissions of the AtmosPhere for…
The atmospheric dispersion in the mid-infrared transparency windows presents and important albeit frequently neglected factor when developing ultra-short pulsed lasers. We show that it can amount to hundreds of fs^2 in 2-3 micron window…
The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wavefront chromaticity and scintillation on the point spread function (PSF) contrast achievable with ground based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wavefront sensing schemes. I show that…