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The zodiacal foreground for a highly sensitive space infrared interferometer is predicted for various observing locations. For the predictions we use a model that was derived from measurements of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). We…
The sensitivity of astronomical X-ray detectors is limited by the instrumental background. The background is especially important when observing low surface brightness sources that are critical for many of the science cases targeted by…
The identification and study of the first galaxies remains one of the most exciting topics in observational cosmology. The determination of the best possible observing strategies is a very important choice in order to build up a…
Wide-field polarization measurements of the twilight sky background during the several nights with bright and extended noctilucent clouds in central and northern Russia in 2014 and 2015 are used to build the phase dependence of degree of…
The lifetime of a satellite is limited, and its calibration may be not stable, it is necessary to continue ground-based measures of the solar diameter with methods less affected by atmospheric turbulence, and optical aberrations: planetary…
In recent decades, the relevance of polarimetry in planetary sciences and astronomy has increased rapidly. Polarization is a fundamental property of light and can be modified by any scattering event. As such, polarization yields additional…
Astronomical polarimetry is a powerful technique that can provide physical information sometimes difficult or impossible to obtain by any other type of observation. Almost every class of binary star can benefit from polarimetric…
Aims: To propose a method for the polarimetric calibration of large astronomical mirrors that does not require use of special optical devices nor knowledge of the exact polarization properties of the calibration target. Methods: We study…
The efficiency of the management of top-class ground-based astronomical facilities supported by Adaptive Optics (AO) relies on our ability to forecast the optical turbulence (OT) and a set of relevant atmospheric parameters. Indeed, in…
Natural (such as lunar) occultations have long been used to study sources on small angular scales, while coronographs have been used to study high contrast sources. We propose launching the Big Occulting Steerable Satellite (BOSS), a large…
From the South Pole, microthermal turbulence within a narrow surface boundary layer some 200m thick provides the dominant contribution to the astronomical seeing. We present results for the seeing at a wavelength of 2.4um. The narrow…
We present a method to map the artificial sky brightness across large territories in astronomical photometric bands with a resolution of approximately 1 km. This is useful to quantify the situation of night sky pollution, to recognize…
The observation of celestial objects is a fundamental activity in astronomy. Ground-based and space telescopes are used to gather electromagnetic radiation from space, allowing astronomers to study a wide range of celestial objects and…
Quantifying the optical chirality of a sample requires the precise measurement of the rotation of the plane of linear polarisation of the transmitted light. Central to this notion is that the sample needs to be exposed to light of a defined…
The precision era of multi-messenger astronomy, together with modern astrophysical, cosmological, and gravitational wave observations, increasingly points toward the existence of a ``dark" sector that cannot be explained within the…
The current modelling of single microlensing light curves neglects the possibility that only a fraction of the light is due to the lensed star, the remaining being due to a close, unresolved blend, which may be related or unrelated to the…
The quality of images of the Sun obtained from the ground are severely limited by the perturbing effect of the turbulent Earth's atmosphere. The post-facto correction of the images to compensate for the presence of the atmosphere require…
In order to avoid collisions with space debris, the near Earth orbit must be continuously scanned by either ground- or spaced-based facilities. For the low Earth orbit, radar telescopes are the workhorse for this task, especially due to…
The potential effect of the lunar exosphere on the near-ultraviolet sky background emission is predicted for Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope (LUT: a funded Chinese scientific payload for the Chang'e-III mission). Using the upper limit on…
Motivated by efforts to return humanity to the Moon, three cases are reviewed for X-ray astronomy from the lunar surface: (1) Facilitation of ambitious engineering designs including high throughput telescopes, long focal length optics and…