Related papers: Operational Concepts of Large Telescopes
We present a summary of the major contributions to the Special Session on Data Management held at the IAU General Assembly in Prague in 2006. While recent years have seen enormous improvements in access to astronomical data, and the Virtual…
Advances in astronomy are often enabled by adoption of new technology. In some instances this is where the technology has been invented specifically for astronomy, but more usually it is adopted from another scientific or industrial area of…
The Virtual Telescope for X-Ray Observations (VTXO) is a conceptual mission under development to demonstrate a new instrument for astronomical observations in the X-ray band using a set of 6U CubeSats. VTXO will use a Phase Fresnel Lens,…
Virtual Observatory (VO) is a data intensive online astronomical research and education environment, taking advantages of advanced information technologies to achieve seamless and uniform access to astronomical information. The concept of…
Telescope and detector developments continuously enable deeper and more detailed studies of astronomical objects. Larger collecting areas, improvement in dispersion and detector techniques, and higher sensitivities allow detection of more…
Astronomy is entering a new era as multiple, large area, digital sky surveys are in production. The resulting datasets are truly remarkable in their own right; however, a revolutionary step arises in the aggregation of complimentary…
Scientific research is a continuous process, and the speed of future progress can be estimated by the pace of finding explanations for previous research questions. In this observers based view of stellar pulsation and asteroseismology, we…
Observational astronomy has shown significant growth over the last decade and has made important contributions to cosmology. A major paradigm shift in cosmology was brought about by observations of Type Ia supernovae. The notion that the…
The recent implementation of the high-speed burst mode at the ISAAC instrument on UT1, and its propagation to other ESO instruments, has opened the door to observational capabilities which hold the potential for a wealth of novel results.…
By sending one or more telescopes into space, Space-VLBI (SVLBI) is able to achieve even higher angular resolution and is therefore the trend of the VLBI technique. For SVLBI program, the design of satellite orbits plays an important role…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is optimized for observations in the near and mid infrared and will provide essential observations for targets that cannot be conducted from the ground or other missions during its lifetime. The state…
Recent and forthcoming advances in instrumentation, and giant new surveys, are creating astronomical data sets that are not amenable to the methods of analysis familiar to astronomers. Traditional methods are often inadequate not merely…
The operations model of the Paranal Observatory relies on the work of efficient staff to carry out all the daytime and nighttime tasks. This is highly dependent on adequate training. The Paranal Science Operations department (PSO) has a…
Observational astronomy has changed drastically in the last decade: manually driven target-by-target instruments have been replaced by fully automated robotic telescopes. Data acquisition methods have advanced to the point that terabytes of…
The discovery and subsequent study of optical counterparts to transient sources is crucial for their complete astrophysical understanding. Various gamma ray burst (GRB) detectors, and more notably the ground--based gravitational wave…
The observation of celestial objects is a fundamental activity in astronomy. Ground-based and space telescopes are used to gather electromagnetic radiation from space, allowing astronomers to study a wide range of celestial objects and…
Agile satellites with advanced attitude maneuvering capability are the new generation of Earth observation satellites (EOSs). The continuous improvement in satellite technology and decrease in launch cost have boosted the development of…
In time-domain astronomy, STLF (Short-Timescale and Large Field-of-view) sky survey is the latest way of sky observation. Compared to traditional sky survey who can only find astronomical phenomena, STLF sky survey can even reveal how short…
In this contribution we evaluate the impact of filtering techniques in enhancing the accuracy of forecasts of optical turbulence and atmospheric parameters critical for ground-based telescopes. These techniques make use of the data…
Adaptive Optics has become a key technology for the largest ground-based telescopes currently under or close to begin of construction. Adaptive optics is an indispensable component and has basically only one task, that is to operate the…