Related papers: The SNAP Telescope
To meet the scientific goals of the Thirty Meter Telescope Project, full diffraction-limited performance is required from the outset and hence the entire observatory is being designed, as a system, to achieve this. The preliminary design…
The major cornerstone of future ground-based astronomy is imaging and spectroscopy at the diffraction limit using adaptive optics. To exploit the potential of current AO systems, we have begun a survey around bright stars to study…
We demonstrate imaging over the visible band using a single planar diffractive lens. This is enabled via multi-level diffractive optics that is designed to focus over a broad wavelength range, which we refer to as an achromatic diffractive…
One of the most important techniques for astrophysics with adaptive optics is the ability to do spectroscopy at diffraction limited scales. The extreme difficulty of positioning a faint target accurately on a very narrow slit can be avoided…
The Telescope to Observe Planetary Systems (TOPS) is a proposed space mission to image in the visible (0.4-0.9 micron) planetary systems of nearby stars simultaneously in 16 spectral bands (resolution R~20). For the ~10 most favorable…
Active optics techniques in astronomy provide high imaging quality. This paper is dedicated to highly deformable active optics that can generate non-axisymmetric aspheric surfaces-or freeform surfaces-by use of a minimum number of…
Near-field optical microscopy and spectroscopy provide high-resolution imaging below the diffraction limit, crucial in physics, chemistry, and biology for studying molecules, nanoparticles, and viruses. These techniques use a sharp metallic…
Label-free observation of nanoparticles by far-field optical microscopy is challenging because their ability to scatter or absorb light dramatically diminishes with decreasing size. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and localized surface…
Two-dimensional (2D) materials beyond graphene such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have unique mechanical, optical and electronic properties with promising applications in flexible devices, catalysis and sensing. Optical imaging…
Reliable, autonomously, deployment of telescopes enables a wide range of possible science cases. In this paper, we present a method for multi-stage telescope alignment with a simple commercial imaging sensor. For these studies, we use a…
Off-axis parabolic mirrors (OAPs) are occasionally desirable for specialized applications, but are known to introduce field-dependent astigmatic aberrations. In an experiment where optical tweezers are formed by OAPs, another OAP is added…
The Single-Mirror Small-Size Telescope (SST-1M) stereoscopic system is composed of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) designed for optimal performance for gamma-ray astronomy in the multi-TeV energy range. It features a…
We present a concept of the X-ray imaging system with high angular-resolution and moderate sensitivity. In this concept, a two-dimensional detector, i.e., imager, is put at a slightly out-of-focused position of the focusing mirror, rather…
The ability to perform nanometer-scale optical imaging and spectroscopy is key to deciphering the low-energy effects in quantum materials, as well as vibrational fingerprints in planetary and extraterrestrial particles, catalytic…
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) provide the most robust means of measuring extragalactic distances. While most of the effort has focused on increasing the number of SNe Ia observed in the optical, near-infrared (NIR) observations remain scarce…
We present the Spectroscopic Classification of Astronomical Transients (SCAT) survey, which is dedicated to spectrophotometric observations of transient objects such as supernovae and tidal disruption events. SCAT uses the SuperNova…
We summarize the scientific potential of high contrast optical space imaging for studies of extrasolar planets, debris disks, and planet formation. The unique scientific capabilities offered by a 2-m class optical telescope, the technical…
X-ray astronomy needs to set bold, science driven goals for the next decade. Only with defined science goals can we know what to work on, and a funding agency appreciate the need for significant technology developments. To be a forefront…
CMB-S4, the next-generation CMB observatory, will deploy hundreds of thousands of detectors to enable mapping the millimeter-wavelength sky with unprecedented speed. The large aperture telescopes for CMB-S4 consist of six-meter diameter…
We provide an overview of the capabilities and performance of the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) when used in its multi-object spectroscopy (MOS) mode employing a novel Micro Shutter Array…