Related papers: Instrumentation For Geological Fieldwork on the Mo…

Radiometry has been of fundamental importance in astronomy from the early beginnings. In this review, we provide an overview of how to achieve a valid laboratory calibration of space telescopes and discuss ways to reliably extend this…

Long-term high-cadence measurements of stellar spectral variability are fundamental to better understand stellar atmospheric properties and stellar magnetism. These, in turn, are fundamental for the detectability of exoplanets as well as…

Earthshine is the dominant source of natural illumination on the surface of the Moon during lunar night, and at locations within permanently shadowed regions that never receive direct sunlight. As such, earthshine may enable the exploration…

The work which we present takes place within the framework of mission SMOS of the ESA which will consist to send a radiometer (1.4 GHz) in space. The goal of the research which we propose is the improvement of the comprehension of the…

An exoplanet-exomoon system presents a superposition of phase curves to observers - the dominant component varies according to the planetary period, and the lesser varies according to both the planetary and the lunar period. If the spectra…

The Lunar Cherenkov technique is a promising method for UHE neutrino and cosmic ray detection which aims to detect nanosecond radio pulses produced during particle interactions in the Lunar regolith. For low frequency experiments, such as…

This paper is a response to a call for white papers solicited by Gemini Observatory and its Science and Technology Advisory Committee, to help define the science case and requirements for a new Gemini instrument, envisaged to consist of a…

Direct imaging characterization of extrasolar planets is often done at low spectral resolution. We model the spectrograph for the Gemini Planet Imager upgrade (GPI 2.0) and assess the instrument's potential for allowing observers to…

X-ray diffraction gratings play an essential role in high-resolution spectroscopy of astrophysical phenomena. We present some scientific highlights from the X-ray grating spectrometers (XGS) on board of the Chandra and XMM/Newton missions,…

The Moon has been regarded as a natural Weber bar capable of amplifying gravitational waves (GWs) for detecting events across a wide range of frequencies. However, accurately determining the amplification effects remains challenging due to…

The techniques of laser cooling combined with atom interferometry make possible the realization of very sensitive and accurate inertial sensors like gyroscopes or accelerometers. Besides earth-based developments, the use of these techniques…

The Moons And Jupiter Imaging Spectrometer (MAJIS) is the visible and near-infrared imaging spectrometer onboard ESA s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission. Before its integration into the spacecraft, the instrument undergoes an…

In 1970, the Soviet Lunokhod 1 rover delivered a French-built laser reflector to the Moon. Although a few range measurements were made within three months of its landing, these measurements---and any that may have followed---are unpublished…

Lunar caves are promising features for long-term and permanent human presence on the moon. However, given their inaccessibility to imaging from survey satellites, the concrete environment within the underground cavities is not well known.…

In this note we mainly explore the possibility of measuring the action of the intrinsic gravitomagnetic field of the rotating Earth on the orbital motion of the Moon with the Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) technique. Expected improvements in it…

The Gemini Planet Imager is an extreme AO instrument with an integral field spectrograph (IFS) operating in Y, J, H, and K bands. Both the Gemini telescope and the GPI instrument are very complex systems. Our goal is that the combined…

Polarimetry remains a largely unexploited technique in observational X-ray astronomy which could provide insight in the study of the strong gravity and magnetic fields at the core of the Constellation-X observational program. Adding a…

Presented is a successful two week lab involving real sky observations of the Moon in which students make telescopic observations and analyze their own images. Originally developed around the 35 mm film camera as a common household object…

Three possible applications of lunar laser ranging to space geodesy are studied. First, the determination of daily Earth orientation parameters (UT0 and variation of latitude), which is rarely used nowadays in presence of all-year VLBI,…

Cosmic objects emit throughout the electro-magnetic spectrum, from radio waves to very high-energy gamma rays. Some spectral regions can be observed from the ground, but space instrumentation is needed for most of them. Some spectral…