Related papers: The WHAT Project
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is performing a homogeneous survey of the sky from space in search of transiting exoplanets. The collected data are also being used for detecting passing Solar system objects, including 17…
Ongoing microlensing observations by OGLE and MOA regularly identify and conduct high-cadence sampling of lensing events with Einstein diameter crossing time, tau_E, of 16 or fewer days. Events with estimated values of tau_E of one to two…
LOFT, the Large Observatory for X-ray Timing, is a new space mission concept devoted to observations of Galactic and extra-Galactic sources in the X-ray domain with the main goals of probing gravity theory in the very strong field…
The Qatar Exoplanet Survey (QES) is discovering hot Jupiters and aims to discover hot Saturns and hot Neptunes that transit in front of relatively bright host stars. QES currently operates a robotic wide-angle camera system to identify…
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…
The Amateur Sky Survey (TASS) is a loose confederation of amateur and professional astronomers. We describe the design and construction of our Mark III system, a set of wide-field drift-scan CCD cameras which monitor the celestial equator…
Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high…
The proposed US Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) Program would secure national open access to at least 25% of the observing time on the Thirty Meter Telescope in the north and the Giant Magellan Telescope in the south. ELTs would advance…
Since 2005 ESO has been working with its community and industry to develop an extremely large optical/infrared telescope. ESO's Extremely Large Telescope, or ELT for short, is a revolutionary ground-based telescope that will have a 39-metre…
Current-day multi-object spectroscopic surveys are often limited in their ability to observe bright stars due to their low surface densities, resulting in increased observational overheads and reduced efficiency. Addressing this, we have…
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a public-private enterprise, is a new time domain survey employing a dedicated camera on the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope with a 47 deg$^2$ field of view and 8 second readout time. It is well…
Gravitational lensing provides a means to measure mass that does not rely on detecting and analysing light from the lens itself. Compact objects are ideal gravitational lenses, because they have relatively large masses and are dim. In this…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array, CTA, will be the major global observatory for very high energy gamma-ray astronomy over the next decade and beyond. The scientific potential of CTA is extremely broad: from understanding the role of…
An all-spherical catadioptic telescope with the angular field of view of several tens of degrees in diameter and spherical focal surface is proposed for the monitoring of large sky areas. We provide a few examples of such a system with the…
I very briefly describe the latest generation near infrared (1-2.5 micron) instruments which are available on, or under development for `large' (D>=3.5 m) telescopes. Most of the imagers under construction are limited to relatively small…
A prototype system for the Permanent All Sky Survey (PASS) project is presented. PASS is a continuous photometric survey of the entire celestial sphere with a high temporal resolution. Its major objectives are the detection of all…
Einstein Telescope (ET) is a possible third generation ground-based gravitational wave observatory for which a design study is currently being carried out. A brief (and non-exhaustive) overview is given of ET's projected capabilities…
A summary is given of the current status and plans for gravitational-wave searches at all plausible wavelengths, from the size of the observable universe to a few kilometers. The anticipated scientific payoff from these searches is…
For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable a mission capable of discovering and characterizing habitable planets like Earth orbiting sunlike stars other than the Sun. At the same time, such a…
We present the LAUE project devoted to develop an advanced technology for building a high focal length Laue lens for soft gamma--ray astronomy (80-600 keV). The final goal is to develop a focusing optics that can improve the current…