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The rapid increase in satellite launches in recent years, and the pressure of launches planned into the next decade, demands an improvement in the efficiency of space domain awareness facilities. Optical facilities form an important…
Phase is a fundamental resource for optical imaging but cannot be directly observed with intensity measurements. The existing methods to quantify a phase distribution rely on complex devices and structures. Here we experimentally…
The measurement of the integrated optical polarization of weakly gravitationally lensed galaxies can provide considerable constraints on lens models. The method outlined depends on fact that the orientation of the direction of optical…
Polarimetry remains a largely unexploited technique in observational X-ray astronomy which could provide insight in the study of the strong gravity and magnetic fields at the core of the Constellation-X observational program. Adding a…
We develop an improved sky background estimator which employs optimal filters for both spatial and pixel intensity distributions. It incorporates growth of masks around detected objects and a statistical estimate of the flux from undetected…
The successful prediction of lensing events is a new and exciting enterprise that provides opportunities to discover and study planetary systems. The companion paper investigates the underlying theory. This paper is devoted to outlining the…
The daytime sky has been recently demonstrated as a useful calibration tool for deriving polarization cross-talk properties of large astronomical telescopes. The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) and other large telescopes under…
The recent discovery of exceptional seeing conditions at Dome C, Antarctica, raises the possibility of constructing an optical observatory there with unique capabilities. However, little is known from an astronomer's perspective about the…
The density of ultralight dark matter can be modified in the vicinity of macroscopic bodies when the dark matter possesses quadratic couplings to the Standard Model. If these couplings are sufficiently strong, Earth's atmosphere acts to…
We designed and built a new astronomical photo-polarimeter that can measure linear polarization simultaneously in three spectral bands. It has a Calcite beamdisplacement prism as the analyzer. The ordinary and extra-ordinary emerging beams…
Imaging, detection and ranging of objects in the presence of significant background noise is a fundamental challenge in optical sensing. Overcoming the limitations imposed in conventional methods, quantum light sources show higher…
The polarization state of starlight reflected by a planetary atmosphere uniquely reveals coverage, particle size, and composition of aerosols as well as changing cloud patterns. It is not possible to obtain a comparable level of detailed…
The number of satellites on low orbit has dramatically increased over the past years, raising concerns among the astronomical community about their impact on observations. Spectroscopic observations represent a large fraction of…
The statistical power of weak lensing measurements is principally driven by the number of high redshift galaxies whose shapes are resolved. Conventional wisdom and physical intuition suggest this is optimised by deep imaging at long (red or…
Because of their limited angular resolution, far-infrared telescopes are usually affected by confusion phenomenon. Since several galaxies can be located in the same instrumental beam, only the brightest objects emerge from the fluctuations…
To provide criteria in the selection of target events preferable for planetary lensing follow-up observations, we investigate the variation of the probability of detecting planetary signals depending on the observables of the lensing…
We point out some advantages of making observations of extrasolar planets in linearly polarized (LP) light. Older cool stars have quite low levels (~ 10^-4 to 10^-5) of fractional LP, while extrasolar planets can have relatively high…
The apparent brightness of satellites is calculated as a function of satellite position as seen by a ground-based observer in darkness. Both direct illumination of the satellite by the Sun as well as indirect illumination due to reflection…
Telescopes often modify the input polarization of a source so that the measured circular or linear output state of the optical signal can be signficantly different from the input. This mixing, or polarization "cross-talk", is defined by the…
Imaging of planets is very difficult, due to the glare from their nearby, much brighter suns. Static and slowly-evolving aberrations are the limiting factors, even after application of adaptive optics. The residual speckle pattern is highly…