Related papers: The SCORPIO focal reducer
The Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has a point spread function with large tails, consisting of events affected by tracker ineffiencies, inactive volumes, and hard scattering; these tails can make source…
The GraF instrument using a Fabry-Perot interferometer cross-dispersed with a grating was one of the first integral-field and long-slit spectrographs built for and used with an adaptive optics system. We describe its concept, design,…
An Andor 1K $\times$ 1K EMCCD detector has been used to develop an optical imaging polarimeter for use at the Cassegrain focus of 1.2 m telescope of PRL. The optics is derived from an older single-element detector instrument and consists of…
AR Scorpii (AR Sco) is the only radio-pulsing white dwarf known to date. It shows a broad-band spectrum extending from radio to X-rays whose luminosity cannot be explained by thermal emission from the system components alone, and is instead…
The development of detectors with a high time resolution has been pivotal to our comprehension of neutron stars and the accurate measurement of their properties. While high-time resolution astronomy has become a standard in the radio and…
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is an airborne astronomical observatory comprised of a 2.5-meter telescope mounted in the aft section of a Boeing 747SP aircraft. During routine operations, several instruments…
Direct imaging of exoplanets requires the detection of very faint objects orbiting close to very bright stars. In this context, the SPICES mission was proposed to the European Space Agency for planet characterization at visible wavelength.…
Astrophotonics is the application of photonic technologies to channel, manipulate, and disperse light from one or more telescopes to achieve scientific objectives in astronomy in an efficient and cost-effective way. Utilizing photonic…
Most optical spectropolarimeters built to date operate as long-slit or point-source instruments; they are inefficient for observations of extended objects such as galaxies and nebulae. 2D spectropolarimetry technique development is a major…
We review astronomical results in the visible (lambda <1 micron) with adaptive optics and note the status the MagAO system and the recent upgrade to visible camera's Simultaneous/Spectra Differential Imager (SDI to SDI+) mode. Since…
The FORS2 instrument is one of the most widely used and productive instruments on the Very Large Telescope. This article reports on a project to improve the quality of the reduced FORS2 spectra that can be produced with the software…
Coronagraph instruments on future space telescopes will enable the direct detection and characterization of Earth-like exoplanets around Sun-like stars for the first time. The quest for the optimal optical coronagraph designs has made rapid…
Over the past ten years, the concept of adaptive optics has evolved from early experimental stages to a standard observing tool now available at almost all major optical and near-infrared telescope facilities. Adaptive optics will also be…
A key tool in the package of software available for the analysis of data from the SPI spectrometer of Integral is the SPIROS system developed at the University of Birmingham. Although intended primarily for the analysis of point sources and…
Large area surveys will dominate the forthcoming decades of astronomy and their success requires characterizing thousands of discoveries through additional observations at higher spatial or spectral resolution, and at complementary cadences…
The upcoming NASA SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) all-sky 0.7 to 5.0 um spectral survey, to be conducted from 2025 to 2027, provides a unique space-based opportunity to…
Background. Relative astrometry at or below the micro-arcsec level with a 1m class space telescope has been repeatedly proposed as a tool for exo-planet detection and characterization, as well as for several topics at the forefront of…
The ATHENA X-ray Observatory-IXO is a planned multinational orbiting X-ray observatory with a focal length of 11.5m. ATHENA aims to perform pointed observations in an energy range from 0.1 keV to 15 keV with high sensitivity. For high…
Measuring the orbits of directly-imaged exoplanets requires precise astrometry at the milliarcsec level over long periods of time due to their wide separation to the stars ($\gtrsim$10 au) and long orbital period ($\gtrsim$20 yr). To reach…
Due to their high frame rates, high sensitivity, low noise, and low dark current, SAPHIRA detectors provide new capabilities for astronomical observations. The SAPHIRA detector is a 320x256@24 $\mu$m pixel HgCdTe linear avalanche photodiode…