2,684 research outputs found
A Review of High School Level Astronomy Student Research Projects over the last two decades
Since the early 1990s with the arrival of a variety of new technologies, the
capacity for authentic astronomical research at the high school level has
skyrocketed. This potential, however, has not realized the bright-eyed hopes
and dreams of the early pioneers who expected to revolutionise science
education through the use of telescopes and other astronomical instrumentation
in the classroom. In this paper, a general history and analysis of these
attempts is presented. We define what we classify as an Astronomy Research in
the Classroom (ARiC) project and note the major dimensions on which these
projects differ before describing the 22 major student research projects active
since the early 1990s. This is followed by a discussion of the major issues
identified that affected the success of these projects and provide suggestions
for similar attempts in the future.Comment: Accepted for Publication in PASA. 26 page
Optical Synoptic Telescopes: New Science Frontiers
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 construction, detectors, and information technology, has had a
dramatic impact on nearly all fields of astronomy, and areas of fundamental
physics. The next-generation instruments, and the surveys that will be made
with them, will maintain this revolutionary progress. The hardware and
computational technical challenges and the exciting science opportunities are
attracting scientists and engineers from astronomy, optics, low-light-level
detectors, high-energy physics, statistics, and computer science. The history
of astronomy has taught us repeatedly that there are surprises whenever we view
the sky in a new way. This will be particularly true of discoveries emerging
from a new generation of sky surveys. Imaging data from large ground-based
active optics telescopes with sufficient etendue can address many scientific
missions simultaneously. These new investigations will rely on the statistical
precision obtainable with billions of objects. For the first time, the full sky
will be surveyed deep and fast, opening a new window on a universe of faint
moving and distant exploding objects as well as unraveling the mystery of dark
energy.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure
Optimization of grazing incidence mirrors and its application to surveying X-ray telescopes
Grazing incidence mirrors for X-ray astronomy are usually designed in the
parabola-hyperbola (Wolter I) configuration. This design allows for optimal
images on-axis, which however degrade rapidly with the off-axis angle. Mirror
surfaces described by polynomia (with terms higher than order two), have been
put forward to improve the performances over the field of view. Here we present
a refined procedure aimed at optimizing wide-field grazing incidence telescopes
for X-ray astronomy. We improve the angular resolution over existing
(wide-field) designs by ~ 20%. We further consider the corrections for the
different plate scale and focal plane curvature of the mirror shells, which
sharpen by another ~ 20% the image quality. This results in a factor of ~ 2
reduction in the observing time needed to achieve the same sensitivity over
existing wide-field designs and of ~ 5 over Wolter I telescopes. We demonstrate
that such wide-field X-ray telescopes are highly advantageous for deep surveys
of the X-ray sky.Comment: 8 pages 4 figures. Accepted for publication on A&A (macro included
Solar astronomy
An overview is given of modern solar physics. Topics covered include the solar interior, the solar surface, the solar atmosphere, the Large Earth-based Solar Telescope (LEST), the Orbiting Solar Laboratory, the High Energy Solar Physics mission, the Space Exploration Initiative, solar-terrestrial physics, and adaptive optics. Policy and related programmatic recommendations are given for university research and education, facilitating solar research, and integrated support for solar research
Numerical control matrix rotation for the LINC-NIRVANA Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system
LINC-NIRVANA will realize the interferometric imaging focal station of the
Large Binocular Telescope. A double Layer Oriented multi-conjugate adaptive
optics system assists the two arms of the interferometer, supplying high order
wave-front correction. In order to counterbalance the field rotation,
mechanical derotation for the two ground wave-front sensors, and optical
derotators for the mid-high layers sensors fix the positions of the focal
planes with respect to the pyramids aboard the wave-front sensors. The
derotation introduces pupil images rotation on the wavefront sensors: the
projection of the deformable mirrors on the sensor consequently change. The
proper adjustment of the control matrix will be applied in real-time through
numerical computation of the new matrix. In this paper we investigate the
temporal and computational aspects related to the pupils rotation, explicitly
computing the wave-front errors that may be generated.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, presented at SPIE Symposium "Astronomical
Telescopes and Instrumentation'' conference "Adaptive Optics Systems
II'',Sunday 27 June 2010, San Diego, California, US
Multi-spectral piston sensor for co-phasing giant segmented mirrors and multi-aperture interferometric arrays
This paper presents the optical design of a multi-spectral piston sensor
suitable to co-phasing giant segmented mirrors equipping the Future Extremely
Large Telescopes (ELTs). The general theory of the sensor is described in
detail and numerical simulations have been carried out, demonstrating that
direct piston and tip-tilt measurements are feasible within accuracies
respectively close to 20 nm and 10 nano-radians. Those values are compatible
with the co-phasing requirements, although the method seems to be perturbed by
uncorrected atmospheric seein
Working Papers: Astronomy and Astrophysics Panel Reports
The papers of the panels appointed by the Astronomy and Astrophysics survey Committee are compiled. These papers were advisory to the survey committee and represent the opinions of the members of each panel in the context of their individual charges. The following subject areas are covered: radio astronomy, infrared astronomy, optical/IR from ground, UV-optical from space, interferometry, high energy from space, particle astrophysics, theory and laboratory astrophysics, solar astronomy, planetary astronomy, computing and data processing, policy opportunities, benefits to the nation from astronomy and astrophysics, status of the profession, and science opportunities
Computing and data processing
The applications of computers and data processing to astronomy are discussed. Among the topics covered are the emerging national information infrastructure, workstations and supercomputers, supertelescopes, digital astronomy, astrophysics in a numerical laboratory, community software, archiving of ground-based observations, dynamical simulations of complex systems, plasma astrophysics, and the remote control of fourth dimension supercomputers
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