Related papers: Increasing science yield with a twilight observing…
The High Resolution Camera (HRCam) speckle imager at the 4.1 m Southern Astrophysical Research telescope is a highly productive instrument that has accumulated about 40K observations to date. Its performance (detected flux, level of the…
The sensitivity and astrometry upgrade ASTRA of the Keck Interferometer is introduced. After a brief overview of the underlying interferometric principles, the technology and concepts of the upgrade are presented. The interferometric…
The Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC) is a purpose-built instrument for high-dispersion coronagraphy in the K and L bands on Keck. This instrument will provide the first high resolution (R$>$30,000) spectra of known directly…
The visual STELLA echelle spectrograph (SES-VIS) is a new instrument for the STELLA-II telescope at the Iza\~na observatory on Tenerife. Together with the original SES spectrograph - which will still be used in the near IR - and a new…
The Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Great Observatory for infrared astronomy, has made available new tools for the investigation of the infrared properties of planetary nebulae. The three instruments onboard, including the Infrared Array…
The growing negative impact of the visibility of satellites in the night sky is influencing the practice of astronomy and astrophotograph, both at the amateur and professional levels. The presence of these satellites has the effect of…
Recent investigations have demonstrated the potential for utilizing a new observational and data analysis technique for studying the atmospheres of non-transiting exoplanets with combined light that relies on acquiring simultaneous,…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is expected to increase known small solar system object populations by an order of magnitude or more over the next decade, enabling a broad array of transformative solar system science…
The Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer is a uniquely capable mission, with three on-board instruments and rapid slewing capabilities. It serves as a fast-response satellite observatory for everything from gravitational-wave counterpart searches…
The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) project is a survey for planetary transits of bright stars. It consists of a small-aperture, wide-field automated telescope located at Winer Observatory near Sonoita, Arizona. The telescope…
Recent high-contrast imaging surveys, looking for planets in young, nearby systems showed evidence of a small number of giant planets at relatively large separation beyond typically 20 au where those surveys are the most sensitive. Access…
We recommend a conceptual design study for a spectroscopic facility in the southern hemisphere comprising a large diameter telescope, fiber system, and spectrographs collectively optimized for massively-multiplexed spectroscopy. As a…
In this paper, we describe the wide-field spectroscopic survey telescope (WST) project. WST is a 12-metre wide-field spectroscopic survey telescope with simultaneous operation of a large field-of-view (3 sq. degree), high-multiplex (20,000)…
One of the well-known problems of producing instruments for Extremely Large Telescopes is that their size (and hence cost) scales rapidly with telescope aperture. To try to break this relation alternative new technologies have been…
The current fleet of space-based solar observatories offers us a wealth of opportunities to study solar flares over a range of wavelengths. Significant advances in our understanding of flare physics often come from coordinated observations…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched successfully on 18th of April, 2018, will observe nearly the full sky and will provide time-series imaging data in ~27-day-long campaigns. TESS is equipped with 4 cameras; each has…
As a response to the white paper call, we propose to turn Kepler to the South Ecliptic Pole (SEP) and observe thousands of large amplitude variables for years with high cadence in the frame of the Kepler-SEP Mission. The degraded pointing…
Targeted spectroscopic exoplanet surveys face the challenge of maximizing their planet detection rates by means of careful planning. The number of possible observation combinations for a large exoplanet survey, i.e., the sequence of…
We introduce the scientific motivations for the development of the Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES) that is now in construction for the Very Large Telescope. The assembled cases span a broad range of contemporary topics…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be a discovery machine for the astronomy and physics communities, revealing astrophysical phenomena from the Solar System to the outer reaches of the observable Universe. While many…