Found 107 talks archived in Telescopes and instrumentation

The Square Kilometre Array is intended to be the centimeter- and meter-wavelength telescope for the 21st Century. Originally proposed as the "hydrogen telescope," the science case is now recognized to be much broader, and the SKA will address fundamental questions in astrophysics, physics, and astrobiology. The international science community has developed a set of Key Science Programs: (1) Emerging from the Dark Ages and the Epoch of Reionization; (2) Galaxy Evolution, Cosmology, and Dark Energy; (3) The Origin and Evolution of Cosmic Magnetism; (4) Strong Field Tests of Gravity Using Pulsars and Black Holes; and (5) The Cradle of Life & Astrobiology. I highlight how the SKA's Key Science Programs will be an integral component of the multi-wavelength, multi-messenger frontiers for astronomy and how the science pathfinding for the SKA is beginning now.

The vision for the use of the WHT in the coming decade is taking shape.   A key element is the construction and deployment of WEAVE, a wide-field massive-multiplex spectrograph.  With 1000 fibres and spectral resolutions of 5000 and 20000, the opportunities for discovery are tremendous.  Three key fields will be: Milky-Way and Local Group archaeology linked to the   Gaia mission; cosmology redshift surveys; and galaxy evolution studies linked to photometric surveys such as VISTA, UKIDSS, LOFAR, EUCLID, and  others. IAC has the opportunity to get involved in this important instrument for ORM from the beginning.

The 2nd generation VLT instrument Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer(MUSE) is going to be an integral field spectrograph with wide field of view and high spatial sampling. It is currently being built by a European consortium to see first light end of 2012. I will describe instrumental properties, show some details of the optomechanical design, present the data processing, and give some examples for possible scientific use.

At the end of 2008, on ideas of teams from the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur (OCA) and IAC, the CoRoT satellite observed the star HD 46375, known to host a non-transiting Saturn-mass exoplanet with a 3.023 day period. HD 46375 is the brightest star with a known close-in planet in the CoRoT accessible field of view. As such, it was targeted by the CoRoT additional program and observed in a CCD normally dedicated to the asteroseismology program, to obtain an ultra-precise photometric lightcurve and detect or place upper limits on the brightness of the planet. In addition, a ground-based support was simultaneously performed with the high-resolution NARVAL spectro-polarimeter to constrain the stellar atmospheric and magnetic properties. In this seminar, I will present the main results, in particular the stellar constrain we obtained thanks to the detection of the oscillation mode signature and the plausible detection of the planetary signal, which, if confirmed with future observations, would be the first detection of phase changes in the visible for a non-transiting planet.

ExPo is an imaging polarimeter that has been built in Utrecht University. ExPo works in the visible, and it combines the dual-beam technique, together with very short exposure times and a high polarization sensitivity. After four successful campaigns at the William Herschel Telescope, we have obtained polarization images of circumstellar environments around T Tau's and Herbig Ae's stars, evolved (post-AGB) stars and planets like Venus and Saturn. Our results prove the utility of imaging polarimetry to characterize faint structures around very different objects. In this talk I will go through the instrument details, and I will show some of our science results.

VIMOS is visible multi-object spectrometer operating on the VLT.  The high multiplex of the VLT visible imager and multi object/integral-field spectrometer, VIMOS, makes it a powerful instrument for large-scale spectroscopic surveys of faint sources. Following community input and recommendations by ESO's Science and Technology Committee, it was decided to upgrade the instrument in phases. The first phase of the upgrade is described and included changing the shutters, installing an active flexure compensation system, replacing the detectors with CCDs with a far better red sensitivity and less fringing, and improving the data reduction pipeline.

In recent years, many countries throughout the Middle East - in particular the more prosperous states - have made great progress in education, higher education, and scientific research. However, this has not often been matched by equivalent progress in astronomy and its related fields, despite the fact that many nations in the region consider astronomy a fundamental part of their cultural and scientific heritage. The current status of astronomy in the individual countries of the Middle East will be reviewed. The positive decision of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) (Commission 46) to take a proactive role through visits and consultancy in the region will also be discussed, including the founding of MEARIM - the Middle East and Africa Regional IAU Meeting (first meeting held in Cairo 2008). The challenges and proposals to move forward teaching and research in astronomy in the Middle East will be considered, with comments relating North African countries and new trends, including space research along with astronomical activities.

3C 279, the first quasar discovered to emit VHE gamma-rays by the MAGIC telescope in 2006, was re-observed by MAGIC in January 2007 during a major optical flare and from December 2008 to April 2009 following an alert from the Fermi space telescope on an exceptionally high gamma -ray state. The January 2007 observations resulted in a detection on January 16 with significance 5.2 sigma, corresponding to a F(> 150 GeV)(3.8±0.8) 10^-11 ph cm^-2 s^-1 while the overall data sample does not show significant signal. The December 2008 - April 2009 observations did not detect the source. We study the multi-wavelength behaviour of the source at the epochs of MAGIC observations, collecting quasi-simultaneous data at optical and X-ray frequencies and for 2009 also gamma-ray data from Fermi. We study the light curves and spectral energy distribution of the source. The spectral energy distributions of three observing epochs (including the February 2006, which has been previously published in Albert et al. 2008a) are modelled with one-zone inverse Compton models and the emission on January 16, 2007 also with two zone model and with a lepto-hadronic model. We find that the VHE gamma-ray emission detected in 2006 and 2007 challenges standard one-zone model, based on relativistic electrons in a jet scattering broad line region photons, while the other studied models fit the observed spectral energy distribution more satisfactorily.

CANARY is a technical demonstrator for the proposed EAGLE instrument for European ELT. EAGLE will have twenty Integral Field Units patrolling a 5 arcminute field and requires a new form of adaptive optics to provide the required image quality for its 0.0375 arcsec image sampling: Laser Guide Star Multi-Object AO. This entails several significant technical innovations: open-loop control, atmospheric tomography, and new calibration methods. The CANARY demonstrator is currently in its first, natural guide star, phase, and the first results have been obtained on sky. CANARY Phase A is described and the first results are presented. The next, laser guide star, phase is then outlined.