Related papers: Applications of Tunable Imaging Filters for the VL…

The Taurus Tunable Filter (TTF) has now been in regular use for seven years on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The instrument was also used for three years (1996--1999) on the William Herschel Telescope. We present a brief review of the…

While tunable filters are a recent development in night time astronomy, they have long been used in other physical sciences, e.g. solar physics, remote sensing and underwater communications. With their ability to tune precisely to a given…

The past five years have seen a rapid rise in the use of tunable filters in many diverse fields of astronomy, through Taurus Tunable Filter (TTF) instruments at the Anglo-Australian and William Herschel Telescopes. Over this time we have…

Tunable filters are set to revolutionize many aspects of experimental astrophysics, particularly for applications in observational cosmology. After a summary of the fundamentals of classical spectroscopy, we present a review of the current…

The Taurus Tunable Filter (TTF) is a tunable narrowband interference filter covering wavelengths from 6300 A to the sensitivity drop-off of conventional CCDs (9600 A), although a blue `arm' (3700-6500 A) is to be added by the end of 1997.…

In the era of Extremely Large Telescopes, the current generation of 8-10m facilities are likely to remain competitive at far-blue visible wavelengths for the foreseeable future. High-efficiency (>20%) observations of the ground UV (300-400…

As we move towards the era of ELTs, it is timely to think about the future role of the 8-m class telescopes. Under the OPTICON programme, novel technologies have been developed that are intended for use in multi-object and integral-field…

Most surveys for multiply-imaged gravitational lenses, outside of rich galaxy clusters, are based on sifting through large samples of distant sources to identify the rare examples of lensing. An alternative strategy, based on the selection…

The present status of weak lensing analyses of clusters of galaxies and of cosmic shear surveys are presented and discussed. We focus on the impact of very large telescopes on present-day and future surveys and compare their potential with…

This study examines the behavior and tunability of plasmonic lenses created from arrays of nanoslits, applicable in sub-wavelength optical microscopy and other high-resolution imaging systems. We performed simulations on COMSOL Multiphysics…

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) can advance scientific frontiers beyond its groundbreaking 10-year survey. Here we explore opportunities for extended operations with proposal-based observing strategies, new filters, or…

Metasurfaces, ultrathin and planar electromagnetic devices with sub-wavelength unit cells, have recently attracted enormous attention for their powerful control over electromagnetic waves, from microwave to visible range. With tunability…

Tunable narrow-band, emission-line surveys have begun to show the ease with which star forming galaxies can be identified in restricted redshift intervals to z ~ 5 with a 4m class telescope. These surveys have been carried out with imaging…

In this white paper, we present the scientific cases for adding narrowband optical filters to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). LSST is currently planning to observe the southern sky in 6 broadband optical filters. Three of the…

Diffraction limited 30m class telescopes will play an important role in gravitational lensing studies, coming online in approximately 2015. As imaging telescopes they will complement the ~6m JWST, probing to smaller angular scales in…

The next generation ground-based extremely large telescopes (ELTs) present incredible opportunities to discover and characterize diverse planetary systems, even potentially habitable worlds. Adaptive-optics assisted thermal-IR (3-14 micron)…

We imagine that large neutrino telescopes will be built and that distant neutrino sources of high energies and fluxes exist. Some possible, if difficult, uses to which they might be put are described; including (i) detecting neutrino…

Recently, it has been recognised that very large spectroscopic surveys (several million spectra) are required to advance our understanding of Dark Energy (via baryonic wiggles) and the detailed history of our Local Group of galaxies (via…

This paper aims at giving an update on the most versatile adaptive optics fed instrument to date, the well known and successful NACO . Although NACO is only scheduled for about two more years at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), it keeps on…

Infrared-blocking scattering aerogel filters have a broad range of potential applications in astrophysics and planetary science observations in the far-infrared, sub-millimeter, and microwave regimes. Successful dielectric modeling of…