Related papers: Aperture Increase Options for the Dutch Open Teles…
This paper describes a concept for the high-accuracy absolute calibration of the instrumental polarization introduced by the primary mirror of a large-aperture telescope. This procedure requires a small aperture with polarization…
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…
The efficiency of the management of top-class ground-based astronomical facilities supported by Adaptive Optics (AO) relies on our ability to forecast the optical turbulence (OT) and a set of relevant atmospheric parameters. Indeed, in…
More than 10,000 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) with a diameter of 80 mm will be installed in multi-PMT Digital Optical Modules (mDOMs) of the IceCube Upgrade. These have been tested and pre-calibrated at two sites. A throughput of more than…
We address three major questions in astronomy, namely the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, the geophysics of exoplanets and cosmology. To achieve this goal, two requirements are needed. First a very large aperture to…
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) International Observatory (TIO) will be a revolutionary leap forward in astronomical observing capabilities, enabling us to address some of the most profound questions about the universe. From unraveling the…
Atmospheric transmission from Dome A, Antarctica, presents new possibilities in the field of terahertz astronomy, where space telescopes have been the only observational tools until now. Using atmospheric transmission measurements from Dome…
Wide-field multi-object spectroscopy is a high priority for European astronomy over the next decade. Most 8-10m telescopes have a small field of view, making 4-m class telescopes a particularly attractive option for wide-field instruments.…
Over the past decade, sky surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have proven the power of large data sets for answering fundamental astrophysical questions. This observational progress, based on a synergy of advances in telescope…
Using the convolution of seeing and diffraction, the relation between seeing and aperture in the visibility of sunspots is explored. It is shown that even telescopes with apertures smaller than 5 centimetres are significantly affected by…
The increasingly popular adoption of deep learning models in many critical source code tasks motivates the development of data augmentation (DA) techniques to enhance training data and improve various capabilities (e.g., robustness and…
The Archives of Photographic PLates for Astronomical USE (APPLAUSE) project is aimed at digitising astronomical photographic plates from three major German plate collections, making them accessible through integration into the International…
New high-resolution adaptive optics systems provide an unprecedentedly detailed view of nearby star forming regions. In particular, young nearby T Tauri stars can be probed at much smaller physical scales (a few AU) than possible just a…
We discuss a family of two-mirror correctors that can greatly extend the field accessible to a fixed telescope such as a liquid mirror telescope. The performance of the corrector is remarkable since it gives excellent images in patches…
Light scattering imposes a major obstacle for imaging objects seated deeply in turbid media, such as biological tissues and foggy air. Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) tackles scattering by volumetrically recovering the optical absorbance…
We introduce and publicly release a new code, ADAPTSMOOTH, which serves to smooth astronomical images in an adaptive fashion, in order to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). The adaptive smoothing scheme allows to take full advantage…
The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a wide-field telescope project focused on detecting optical counterparts to gravitational-wave sources. GOTO uses arrays of 40 cm unit telescopes (UTs) on a shared robotic mount,…
General arguments for optimized coronagraphy in the search for planets are presented. First, off-axis telescopes provide the best telescopic platforms for use with coronagraphy, and telescope fabrication technology now allows the…
India's largest size 3.6 meter Devashal optical telescope (DOT) was commissioned in the year 2016, though the idea of building it germinated way back in the year 1976. This article provides research accounts as well as glimpses of its…
As new large-scale astronomical surveys greatly increase the number of objects targeted and discoveries made, the requirement for efficient follow-up observations is crucial. Adaptive optics imaging, which compensates for the image-blurring…