Related papers: Monitoring Variability of the Sky
Robo-AO is the first autonomous laser adaptive optics system and science instrument operating on sky. With minimal human oversight, the system robotically executes large scale surveys, monitors long-term astrophysical dynamics and…
GRBs vary more rapidly than any other known cosmological phenomena. The lower limits of this variability have not yet been explored. Improvements in detectors would reveal or limit the actual rate of short GRBs. Were microsecond "spike"…
Synoptic sky surveys are becoming the largest data generators in astronomy, and they are opening a new research frontier, that touches essentially every field of astronomy. Opening of the time domain to a systematic exploration will…
The past fifty years have been an epoch of impressive progress in the field of astronomical technology. Practically all the technical tools, which we use today, have been developed during that time span. While the first half of this period…
This paper presents a visual tracking system that is capable or running real time on-board a small UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). The tracking system is computationally efficient and invariant to lighting changes and rotation of the object…
In the era of big data astronomy, next generation telescopes and large sky surveys produce data sets at the TB or even PB level. Due to their large data volumes, these astronomical data sets are extremely difficult to transfer and analyze…
The time domain of the sky has been only sparsely explored. Nevertheless, recent discoveries from limited surveys and serendipitous discoveries indicate that there is much to be found on timescales from nanoseconds to years and at…
At the Venezuela National Astronomical Observatory we are carrying out variability surveys spanning many hundreds of square degrees near the celestial equator, using an 8k x 8k CCD Mosaic Camera optimized for drift-scanning on a 1m Schmidt…
Large constellations of artificial satellites are beginning to interfere with astronomical observing. Visual magnitude measurements of these spacecraft are useful for monitoring and characterizing their brightness. This paper describes the…
Photometric measurements are prone to systematic errors presenting a challenge to low-amplitude variability detection. In search for a general-purpose variability detection technique able to recover a broad range of variability types…
Estimation of time delays from a noisy and gapped data is one of the simplest data analysis problems in astronomy by its formulation. But as history of real experiments show, the work with observed data sets can be quite complex and…
We review the origins of the Virtual Observatory (VO) concept, and the current status of the efforts in this field. VO is the response of the astronomical community to the challenges posed by the modern massive and complex data sets. It is…
This paper describes the first part of the photometric data from the 9x9 deg ASAS cameras monitoring the whole southern hemisphere in V-band. Data acquisition and reduction pipeline is described and preliminary list of variable stars is…
To date, there are little reliable data on the position, velocity and acceleration characteristics of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). The dual hardware and software system described in this document provides a means to address this…
Future space and ground-based survey programmes will produce an impressive amount of photometric data. The GAIA space mission will map the complete sky down to mag V=20 and produce time series for about 1 billion stars. Survey instruments…
Astronomy has always been at the forefront of information technology, moving from the era of photographic plates, to digital snapshots and now to digital movies of the sky. This has brought about a data explosion with multi- terabyte…
A significant amount of data on the historical and current behaviour of variable stars is derived from visual estimates of brightness using a set of comparison stars. To make optimum use of this invaluable collection one must understand the…
Spherical coordinate systems, which are ubiquitous in astronomy, cannot be shown without distortion on flat, two-dimensional surfaces. This poses challenges for the two complementary phases of visual exploration -- making discoveries in…
Observatories are complex scientific and technical institutions serving diverse users and purposes. Their telescopes, instruments, software, and human resources engage in interwoven workflows over a broad range of timescales. These…
Small satellites have proven to be viable Earth observation platforms. These satellites operate in regimes of increased trajectory uncertainty where traditional planning approaches can lead to sub-optimal task plans, limiting science…