Related papers: Increasing science yield with a twilight observing…
Exoplanets are abundant in our galaxy and yet characterizing them remains a technical challenge. Solar System planets provide an opportunity to test the practical limitations of exoplanet observations with high signal-to-noise data that we…
We describe updated scientific goals for the wide-field, millimeter-wave survey that will be produced by the Simons Observatory (SO). Significant upgrades to the 6-meter SO Large Aperture Telescope (LAT) are expected to be complete by 2028,…
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has collected high-precision, high-cadence time series photometry on 781,590 unique postage-stamp targets across 21 different fields of view. These observations have already yielded 2,496 scientific…
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…
We discuss the future possibilities for extragalactic star cluster research with the expected new ground-based and space-based telescopes and instrumentation. Significant gains are expected due to improved angular resolution, sensitivity,…
One of the problems of producing spectrographs for Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) is that the beam size is required to scale with telescope aperture if all other parameters are held constant, leading to enormous size and implied cost.…
We present the wide field slitless spectroscopy mode of the NIRISS instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. This mode employs two orthogonal low-resolution (resolving power $\approx 150$) grisms in combination with a set of six…
The Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) is the science module of the Canadian-built Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) onboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). NIRISS has four observing modes: 1) broadband imaging…
The ASTrometric and phase-Referenced Astronomy (ASTRA) project will provide phase referencing and astrometric observations at the Keck Interferometer, leading to enhanced sensitivity and the ability to monitor orbits at an accuracy level of…
IRIS (InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph) is a first light near-infrared diffraction limited imager and integral field spectrograph being designed for the future Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). IRIS is optimized to perform astronomical studies…
The MeerKAT radio telescope array, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), and eventually the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) will usher in a remarkable new era in astronomy, with thousands of transients being discovered and transmitted to…
We present first science observations taken during the commissioning activities of the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument on the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission. SPICE is a high-resolution imaging spectrometer…
The CRyogenic InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph (CRIRES) Upgrade project CRIRES$^{+}$ extended the capabilities of CRIRES. It transformed this VLT instrument into a cross-dispersed spectrograph to increase the wavelength range that is covered…
The wide-field spectroscopic survey telescope (WST) is proposed to become the next large optical/near infrared facility for the European Southern Observatory (ESO) once the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has become operational. While the…
The Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument is a high-resolution imaging spectrometer operating at extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths. In this paper, we present the concept, design, and pre-launch performance of…
We present the design and lab performance of a prototype lenslet-slicer hybrid integral field spectrograph (IFS), validating the concept for use in future instruments like SCALES/PSI-Red. By imaging extrasolar planets with IFS, it is…
The Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) on board the Spitzer Space Telescope observed about 15,000 objects during the cryogenic mission lifetime. Observations provided low-resolution (R~60-127) spectra over ~5-38um and high-resolution (R~600)…
SPHERE (Beuzit et al,. 2019) has now been in operation at the VLT for more than 5 years, demonstrating a high level of performance. SPHERE has produced outstanding results using a variety of operating modes, primarily in the field of direct…
We present a new solution for the dispersive element in astronomical spectrographs, which in many cases can provide an upgrade path to enhance the spectral resolution of existing moderate-resolution reflection-grating spectrographs. We…
The Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC) is a series of upgrades for the Keck II Adaptive Optics (AO) system and the NIRSPEC spectrograph to enable diffraction-limited, high-resolution ($R>30,000$) spectroscopy of exoplanets and…