Related papers: The MONS Star Trackers
Space astronomy in the last 40 years has largely been done from spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) for which the technology is proven and delivery mechanisms are readily available. However, new opportunities are arising with the surge in…
Neutron stars (NSs) are compact objects that host the densest forms of matter in the observable universe, providing unique opportunities to study the behaviour of matter at extreme densities. While precision measurements of NS masses…
Radio astronomy observations of close approaches of the Solar system planets to compact radio sources as well as radio source occultations by planets may be of large interest for planetary sciences, dynamical astronomy, and testing gravity…
The Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) is a Canadian-led 15 cm Earth-orbiting telescope originally designed to detect asteroids near the Sun. Its design is however also suitable for the observation of exoplanetary transits…
The NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposition submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission. The main scientific goal is to detect and characterize planetary systems in an exhaustive way down to 1 Earth mass…
The Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork (PLANET) is a worldwide collaboration of astronomers using semi-dedicated European, South African, and Australian telescopes to perform continuous, rapid and precise multi-band CCD photometric…
The Planck mission will permit measurements of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background and of polarized foregrounds such as our own Galaxy with an unprecedented combination of accuracy and completeness. This will provide…
We analyze an intensity interferometry measurement carried out with two point-like detectors facing a distant source (e.g., a star) that may be partially occluded by an absorptive object (e.g., a planet). Such a measurement, based on the…
This paper presents a new algorithm for autonomous multitarget tracking of resident space objects using optical angles-only measurements from a spaceborne observer. To enable autonomous angles-only navigation of spacecraft swarms, an…
The Solar Submillimeter Telescope (SST) is an unique instrument that has been observing the Sun daily since 2001 bringing a wealth of information and raising new questions about the particle acceleration and transport, and emission…
In the summer of the year 2000, a NASA Small Explorer satellite, the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI), will be launched. It will consist of nine large, coaxial germanium detectors viewing the Sun through a set of Rotation…
Camera image sensors can be used to detect ionizing radiation in addition to optical photons. In particular, cosmic-ray muons are detected as long, straight tracks passing through multiple pixels. The distribution of track lengths can be…
The successful launch of the CoRoT (COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transits) satellite opens a new era in asteroseismology. The space photometry is complemented by high-resolution spectroscopy and multicolour photometry from ground, to…
The Monitor project is a photometric monitoring survey of nine young (1-200Myr) clusters in the solar neighbourhood to search for eclipses by very low mass stars and brown dwarfs and for planetary transits in the light curves of cluster…
A measurement of the efficiency of CMOS sensors in smartphone cameras to cosmic ray muons is presented. A coincidence in external scintillators indicates the passage of a cosmic ray muon, allowing the measurement of the efficiency of the…
MOONS is a new conceptual design for a Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope (VLT), selected by ESO for a Phase A study. The baseline design consists of 1000 fibers deployable over a field of view…
Through polarization observations masers are unique probes of the magnetic field in a variety of different astronomical objects, with the different maser species tracing different physical conditions. In recent years maser polarization…
Modern dual-polarization receivers allow a radio telescope to characterize the full polarization state of incoming insterstellar radio waves. Many astronomers incorrectly consider a polarimeter to be the "backend" of the telescope. We go to…
Radio wavelength astrometry of stars and other objects has a long and productive history. The use of that technique to determine whether stars have planets around them would cover a nearly unique part of the parameter space for detection of…
The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a new ground-based sky survey designed to find transiting Neptunes and super-Earths. By covering at least sixteen times the sky area of Kepler we will find small planets around stars that are…