Related papers: The SOFIA Telescope
The discovery of cosmic radio emission by Karl Jansky in the course of searching for the source of interference to telephone communications and the instrumental advances which followed, have led to a series of new paradigm changing…
Small Solar system Objects (SSOs) preserve the physical, chemical, and dynamical signatures of the Sun's protoplanetary disk. Upcoming surveys will discover vast numbers of new objects, yet their scientific value will depend on follow-up…
The Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is a space-borne, cryogenically-cooled infrared observatory capable of studying objects ranging from our Solar System to the distant reaches of the Universe. SIRTF is the final element in NASA's…
Full sky coverage with 30-40 meter-class telescopes is essential to answer fundamental questions in Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Physics, such as the composition of the Universe and the formation of the first stars and supermassive black…
Optical fibres have already played a huge part in ground based astronomical instrumentation, however, with the revolution in photonics currently taking place new fibre technologies and integrated optical devices are likely to have a…
The GREAT observations need frequency-selective calibration across the passband for the residual atmospheric opacity at flight altitude. At these altitudes the atmospheric opacity has both narrow and broad spectral features. To determine…
The World Space Observatory Project is a new space mission concept, grown out the needs of the Astronomical community to have access to the part of the electromagnetic spectrum where all known physics can be studied on all possible time…
Coronal astronomy is by now a fairly mature discipline, with a quarter century having gone by since the detection of the first stellar X-ray coronal source (Capella), and having benefitted from a series of major orbiting observing…
The purpose of this document is to present a few statistics about the role of Italian astronomy, focusing on the production by INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica). Data are presented but very few comments are given. We did not use…
The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is a world-leading astronomical observatory, where the italian partnership has played an important role in increasing the telescope's productivity, both through an optimized observing strategy and through…
Since May 2006, the two STELLA robotic telescopes at the Izana observatory in Tenerife, Spain, delivered an almost uninterrupted stream of scientific data. To achieve such a high level of autonomous operation, the replacement of all…
Astronomy produces extremely large data sets from ground-based telescopes, space missions, and simulation. The volume and complexity of these rich data sets require new approaches and advanced tools to understand the information contained…
This article is the written version of the closing talk presented at the conference `A Century of Cosmology' held at San Servolo, Italy, in August 2007. I focus on the prospects of constraining fundamental physics from cosmological…
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument is a critical technology demonstrator for NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory. With a predicted visible-light flux ratio detection limit of 1E-8 or better, it will be capable of…
This paper is intended to offer a pedagogical treatment of cosmological modeling and inflationary cosmology. In recent years, inflation has become accepted as a standard scenario making predictions that are testable by observations of the…
The current and prospective status of astronomical research in Ukraine is discussed. A brief history of astronomical research in Ukraine is presented and the system organizing scientific activity is described, including astronomy education,…
The current status of the high spatial resolution imaging interferometry in optical astronomy is reviewed in the light of theoretical explanation, as well as of experimental constraints that exist in the present day technology. The basic…
Astrophotonics represents a cutting-edge approach in observational astronomy. This paper explores the significant advancements and potential applications of astrophotonics, highlighting how photonic technologies stand to revolutionise…
We discuss the extent to which the visibility of the heavens was a necessary condition for the development of science, with particular reference to the measurement of time. Our conclusion is that while astronomy had significant importance,…
The WFIRST-AFTA 2.4 m telescope will provide in the next decade the opportunity to host a coronagraph for the imaging and spectroscopy of planets and disks. The telescope, however, is not ideal, given its obscured aperture. Only recently…