Related papers: FAVOR (FAst Variability Optical Registration) -- A…
Observatories constructed solely for photometric monitoring make it possible to understand the temporal nature of objects over time scales that historically have been difficult to achieve. We report on one such observatory, the Remote…
Fast variability of optical objects is an interesting though poorly explored subject in modern astronomy. Real-time data processing and identification of transient celestial events in the images is very important for such study as it allows…
The Rapid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) experiment is a spatially distributed system of autonomous robotic telescopes that is designed to monitor the sky for optical transients. The core of the system is composed of two telescope…
Adaptive optics is a technique mostly used on large telescopes. It turns out to be challenging for smaller telescopes (0.5~2m) due to the small isoplanatic angle, small subapertures and high correction speeds needed at visible wavelengths,…
Magnetic-Optical Filter (MOF) is an instrument suited for high precision spectral measurements for its peculiar characteristics. It is employed in Astronomy and in the field of the telecommunications (it is called FADOF there). In this…
Astronomical transients are intrinsically interesting things to study. Fast optical transients (microsecond timescale) are a largely unexplored field of optical astronomy mainly due to the fact that large optical telescopes are…
It is widely believed that adaptive optics only has a role in correcting turbulent wavefronts on large telescopes using very bright reference stars. Unfortunately these are very scarce and many astronomical targets require wavefront…
Based on diffraction theory and the propagation of the light, Fourier optics is a powerful tool allowing the estimation of a visible-range imaging system to transfer the spatial frequency components of an object. The analyses of the imaging…
The transient optical sky has remained largely unexplored on very short timescales. While there have been some experiments searching for optical transients from minutes to years, none have had the capability to distinguish millisecond Fast…
Astronomers working with faint targets will benefit greatly from improved image quality on current and planned ground-based telescopes. At present, most adaptive optic systems are targeted at the highest resolution with bright guide stars.…
During a tracking mode observation, every telescope with an alt-azimuthal mount shows a rotation in the field of view (FoV) due to the diurnal motion of the Earth. The angular extension of the rotation depends mainly on the time length of…
The notion of a Fast Moving Object (FMO), i.e. an object that moves over a distance exceeding its size within the exposure time, is introduced. FMOs may, and typically do, rotate with high angular speed. FMOs are very common in sports…
FALCON is an original concept for a next generation spectrograph at ESO VLT or at future ELTs. It is a spectrograph including multiple small integral field units (IFUs) which can be deployed within a large field of view such as that of…
An imaging technique with sensitivity to short duration optical transients is described. The technique is based on the use of wide-field cameras operating in a drift scanning mode, whereby persistent objects produce trails on the sensor and…
Astrophysical transients have been observed for millennia and have shaped our most basic assumptions about the Universe. In the last century, systematic searches have grown from detecting handfuls of transients per year to over 7000 in 2018…
Future large space telescopes will be equipped with adaptive optics (AO) to overcome wavefront aberrations and achieve high contrast for imaging faint astronomical objects, such as earth-like exoplanets and debris disks. In contrast to AO…
LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) is an innovative radio telescope optimized for the frequency range 30-240 MHz. The telescope is realized as a phased aperture array without any moving parts. Digital beam forming allows the telescope to point to…
The Wide Field X-ray Telescope (WFXT) is a proposed mission with a high survey speed, due to the combination of large field of view (FOV) and effective area, i.e. grasp, and sharp PSF across the whole FOV. These characteristics make it…
The time domain community wants robust and reliable tools to enable production of and subscription to community-endorsed event notification packets (VOEvent). The VAO Transient Facility (VTF) is being designed to be the premier brokering…
We present preliminary results on a single field observed by WHAT, a small-aperture short focal length automated telescope with an 8.2 deg x 8.2 deg field of view, located at the Wise Observatory. The system is similar to the members of…