Related papers: The OSER project
About 25% of the optical extragalactic sky is obscured by the dust and stars of our Milky Way. Dynamically important structures might still lie hidden in this zone. Various approaches are presently being employed to uncover the galaxy…
We have developed a new X-ray absorption model, called {\tt IONeq}, which computes the optical depth $\tau(E)$ simultaneously for ions of all abundant elements, assuming ionization equilibrium and taking into account turbulent broadening.…
The EUSO (Extreme Universe Space Observatory) project is developing a new mission concept for the scientific research of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) from space. The EUSO wide-field telescope will look down from space onto the…
The orbital sampling effect (OSE) appears in phase-folded transit light curves of extrasolar planets with moons. Analytical OSE models have hitherto neglected stellar limb darkening and non-zero transit impact parameters and assumed that…
OH absorption is currently the only viable way to detect OH molecules in non-masing galaxies at cosmological distances. There have been only 6 such detections at z>0.05 to date and so it is hard to put a statistically robust constraint on…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
We summarize recent attempts to detect warm ionized gas at large galactocentric distances. This includes searching for gas at the edges of spirals, in between cluster galaxies, towards extragalactic HI clouds, and towards high velocity…
The Oort cloud is usually thought of as a collection of icy comets inhabiting the outer reaches of the Solar system, but this picture is incomplete. We use simulations of the formation of the Oort cloud to show that ~4% of the small bodies…
SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) is a five-year M-class mission proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks…
We are developing a rocket-borne instrument (the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment, or CIBER) to search for signatures of primordial galaxy formation in the cosmic near-infrared extra-galactic background. CIBER consists of a wide-field…
The ultraviolet (UV) window has been largely unexplored through balloons for astronomy. We discuss here the development of a compact near-UV spectrograph with fiber optics input for balloon ights. It is a modified Czerny-Turner system built…
Beam cooling enables an increase of peak and average luminosities and significantly expands the discovery potential of colliders; therefore, it is an indispensable component of any modern design. Optical Stochastic Cooling (OSC) is a…
About 25% of the optical extragalactic sky is obscured by the dust and stars of our Milky Way. Dynamically important structures might still lie hidden in this zone. Various approaches are presently being employed to uncover the galaxy…
This is the first in a series of papers describing the {\it Optical Redshift Survey} (ORS), a redshift survey of optically selected galaxies covering 98\% of the sky above $|b| = 20^\circ$ (8.09 ster). The survey is drawn from the UGC, ESO,…
The outer solar system provides a unique, quiet vantage point from which to observe the universe around us, where measurements could enable several niche astrophysical science cases that are too difficult to perform near Earth. NASA's New…
Spectra obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope GHRS are combined with high-resolution optical spectra and UV spectra from Copernicus to study the abundances and physical conditions in the diffuse interstellar clouds seen along the line of…
We use spectroscopic data from HST and FUSE to study the wide range of ionization states of the "highly ionized high-velocity clouds". Studied extensively in OVI absorption, these clouds are usually assumed to be infalling gas in the…
In the late 1990s, the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) team conducted the second phase of their long-term monitoring programme, OGLE-II, which since has been superseded by OGLE-III. All the monitoring data of this second…
We discuss the possibility of using OH and H2O gigamasers to trace the redshift distribution of luminous, dust-obscured, star-forming galaxies. It has long been thought that ultraluminous, interacting galaxies should host gigamasers due to…
Extreme Scattering Events are radio-wave lensing events caused by AU-sized concentrations of ionised gas. Although they were discovered more than a decade ago we still have no clear picture of the physical nature of the lenses. To…