Related papers: The Big Fringe Telescope
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is conceived as an 8.4-m telescope with CCD or CMOS focal plane covering most of a field 0.6 m in diameter, the latter exceeding the size of the largest photographic plates ever used in astronomy.…
The study of binary stars is critical to apprehend many of the most interesting classes of stars. Moreover, quite often, the study of stars in binary systems is our only mean to constrain stellar properties, such as masses and radii.…
Optical long baseline interferometry was recently established as a technique capable of resolving stars and their circumstellar environments at the milliarcsecond (mas) resolution level. This high-resolution opens an entire new window to…
The principles and practice of astronomical imaging Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS) at far-infrared wavelengths are described. The Mach-Zehnder interferometer design has been widely adopted for current and future imaging FTS…
Two major areas of modern radio astronomy, namely, explosive astrophysical transient phenomena and observations of cosmological structures, are driving the design of aperture arrays towards large numbers of low-cost elements consisting of…
Interferometry provides highly sensitive access to optical phase and is central to much of modern metrology and phase imaging methods. Conventional implementations, however, often face trade-offs between mechanical stability and…
We present science cases and instrument design considerations for the BIFROST instrument that will open the short-wavelength (Y/J/H-band), high spectral dispersion (up to R=25,000) window for the VLT Interferometer. BIFROST will be part of…
The Thirty-Meter Telescope is an ambitious project to build a giant segmented mirror telescope with fully integrated adaptive optics systems that will produce diffraction-limited images. A powerful suite of instruments is being developed…
MAPPIT is an optical interferometer installed at the coude focus of the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope. The instrument combines non-redundant masking with wavelength dispersion and is able to record fringes simultaneously over a wide…
The detection of fast radio bursts (FRBs) in radio astronomy is a complex task due to the challenges posed by radio frequency interference (RFI) and signal dispersion in the interstellar medium. Traditional search algorithms are often…
The Universe is almost totally unexplored at low surface brightness levels. In spite of great progress in the construction of large telescopes and improvements in the sensitivity of detectors, the limiting surface brightness of imaging…
The closest examples of high-mass star birth occurs in deeply embedded environments at kiloparsec distances. Although much progress has been made, an observationally validated picture of the dominant processes which allows the central…
Current large-aperture cosmic microwave background (CMB) telescopes have nearly maximized the number of detectors that can be illuminated while maintaining diffraction-limited image quality. The polarization-sensitive detector arrays being…
We present a design for a wide-field spectroscopic telescope. The only large powered mirror is spherical, the resulting spherical aberration is corrected for each target separately, giving exceptional image quality. The telescope is a…
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has traditionally focused on the detection of narrowband electromagnetic beacons. However, terrestrial technology is increasingly evolving toward distributed, low-power, wideband digital…
This report describes the 2014 study by the Science Definition Team (SDT) of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission. It is a space observatory that will address the most compelling scientific problems in dark energy,…
Aims: Optical interferometry from space for the purpose of detecting and characterising exoplanets is seeing a revival, specifically from missions such as the proposed Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). A default assumption since…
Far-infrared astronomy has advanced rapidly since its inception in the late 1950's, driven by a maturing technology base and an expanding community of researchers. This advancement has shown that observations at far-infrared wavelengths are…
The Synchronous Network of distant Telescopes (SNT) represents an innovative approach in observational astrophysics. Authors present the unique existing realization of the SNT-conception. It was founded within the international…
In this paper are reviewed various designs of advanced, multi-aperture optical systems dedicated to high angular resolution imaging or to the detection of exo-planets by nulling interferometry. A simple Fourier optics formalism applicable…