Related papers: The Submillimeter Frontier: A Space Science Impera…
Current submillimetre surveys are hindered in their ability to reveal detailed information on the epoch of galaxy formation and the evolutionary history of a high-redshift starburst galaxy population. The difficulties are due to the small…
Various aspects of cosmology require comprehensive all-sky mapping of the cosmic web to considerable depths. In order to probe the whole extragalactic sky beyond 100 Mpc, one must draw on multiwavelength datasets and state-of-the-art…
Intensity interferometry permits very long optical baselines and the observation of sub-milliarcsecond structures. Using planned kilometric arrays of air Cherenkov telescopes at short wavelengths, intensity interferometry may increase the…
Achieving a precise understanding of galaxy formation in a cosmological context is one of the great challenges in theoretical astrophysics, due to the vast range of spatial scales involved in the relevant physical processes. Observations in…
Observations at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths promise to revolutionize the study of high redshift galaxies and AGN by providing a unique probe of the conditions within heavily extinguished regions of star formation and nuclear…
[NIRSS is one of three concepts that contributed to the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission advocated by the Decadal Survey.] Operating beyond the reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, free of its limiting absorption and…
The simple physics of microlensing provides a well-understood tool with which to probe the atmospheres of distant stars in the Galaxy and Local Group with high magnification and resolution. Recent results in measuring stellar surface…
We exploit observations at 1.25 mm with the ESO-SEST telescope of a southern galaxy sample, selected from the IRAS PSC and complete to $S_{60}=2 Jy$, to derive the FIR and mm luminosity functions and the conditional probability…
Imaging and spectroscopic observations in the mid-infrared wavelength range (5$\mu$m--30$\mu$m) offer valuable insight into the origins of stars and planets. Sensitive new array detectors on 8-meter class telescopes make it possible to…
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…
Precise cosmological measurements are essential for understanding the evolution of the universe and the nature of dark energy. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the most sensitive single-dish radio telescope, has…
Clusters of galaxies are used to map the large-scale structures in the universe and as probe of universe evolution. They can be observed through the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. At this respect the spectro-imaging at low resolution…
HISPEC is a new, high-resolution near-infrared spectrograph being designed for the W.M. Keck II telescope. By offering single-shot, R=100,000 between 0.98 - 2.5 um, HISPEC will enable spectroscopy of transiting and non-transiting exoplanets…
The measurements of COBE/FIRAS have shown that the CMB spectrum is extremely close to a perfect blackbody. There are, however, a number of processes in the early Universe that should create spectral distortions at a level which is within…
I describe the capabilities of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, scheduled for May 2009 installation on the Hubble Space Telescope. With a factor-of-ten increase in far-UV throughput for moderate resolution spectroscopy, COS will enable a…
The HIgh-Resolution Mid-infrarEd Spectrometer (HIRMES) is the 3rd Generation Instrument for the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), currently in development at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and due for…
The Star Watch extreme-precision astrometry mission (0.1 - 1.0 uas) builds on technology developed, and validated, during the SIM (Space Interferometry Mission) project. The sole science instrument is an optical interferometer with 50-cm…
The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) is designed to probe the correlated evolution of galaxies, star formation, active galactic nuclei (AGN) and dark matter (DM) with large-scale structure (LSS) over the redshift range z $> 0.5 $ to 6. The…
SCALES (Slicer Combined with an Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy) is a 2 to 5 micron high-contrast lenslet-based Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) designed to characterize exoplanets and their atmospheres. Like other…
The answers to fundamental science questions in astrophysics, ranging from the history of the expansion of the universe to the sizes of nearby stars, hinge on our ability to make precise measurements of diverse astronomical objects. As our…