3,441 research outputs found
On-Orbit Results from an Ultra-Low SWaP Black Silicon Star Tracker
In August 2019, two 1.5U AeroCube-10 satellites built by The Aerospace Corporation were deployed from a Cygnus resupply spacecraft. Each of the satellites has two star trackers which are many times smaller than commercially available alternatives. The significant size reduction is enabled by the SiOnyx XQE-0920 sensor which offers dramatically improved visible and near-infrared sensitivity in an uncooled CMOS platform. This allows the use of a smaller-aperture lens than traditionally used in small form factor star trackers, while maintaining the ability to detect stars of magnitude 5. The reduced volume enables innovative system engineering trades such as forgoing star tracker baffles, and instead flying multiple sensors on the same spacecraft to combat stray light by using the spacecraft body itself as a shield. The additional interior volume made available also enables more capable missions in smaller CubeSat form factors.
On-orbit results are presented showing angular accuracy and solution availability statistics as a function of angular rotation rate. A calibration technique to compensate for optical distortion is also presented, which enables the use of a low-cost COTS lens with a wide field of view. Despite the extremely small volume, the star tracking performance is comparable to units many times larger
The Multi-Object, Fiber-Fed Spectrographs for SDSS and the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
We present the design and performance of the multi-object fiber spectrographs
for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and their upgrade for the Baryon
Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). Originally commissioned in Fall 1999
on the 2.5-m aperture Sloan Telescope at Apache Point Observatory, the
spectrographs produced more than 1.5 million spectra for the SDSS and SDSS-II
surveys, enabling a wide variety of Galactic and extra-galactic science
including the first observation of baryon acoustic oscillations in 2005. The
spectrographs were upgraded in 2009 and are currently in use for BOSS, the
flagship survey of the third-generation SDSS-III project. BOSS will measure
redshifts of 1.35 million massive galaxies to redshift 0.7 and Lyman-alpha
absorption of 160,000 high redshift quasars over 10,000 square degrees of sky,
making percent level measurements of the absolute cosmic distance scale of the
Universe and placing tight constraints on the equation of state of dark energy.
The twin multi-object fiber spectrographs utilize a simple optical layout
with reflective collimators, gratings, all-refractive cameras, and
state-of-the-art CCD detectors to produce hundreds of spectra simultaneously in
two channels over a bandpass covering the near ultraviolet to the near
infrared, with a resolving power R = \lambda/FWHM ~ 2000. Building on proven
heritage, the spectrographs were upgraded for BOSS with volume-phase
holographic gratings and modern CCD detectors, improving the peak throughput by
nearly a factor of two, extending the bandpass to cover 360 < \lambda < 1000
nm, and increasing the number of fibers from 640 to 1000 per exposure. In this
paper we describe the original SDSS spectrograph design and the upgrades
implemented for BOSS, and document the predicted and measured performances.Comment: 43 pages, 42 figures, revised according to referee report and
accepted by AJ. Provides background for the instrument responsible for SDSS
and BOSS spectra. 4th in a series of survey technical papers released in
Summer 2012, including arXiv:1207.7137 (DR9), arXiv:1207.7326 (Spectral
Classification), and arXiv:1208.0022 (BOSS Overview
Building the Evryscope: Hardware Design and Performance
The Evryscope is a telescope array designed to open a new parameter space in
optical astronomy, detecting short timescale events across extremely large sky
areas simultaneously. The system consists of a 780 MPix 22-camera array with an
8150 sq. deg. field of view, 13" per pixel sampling, and the ability to detect
objects down to Mg=16 in each 2 minute dark-sky exposure. The Evryscope,
covering 18,400 sq.deg. with hours of high-cadence exposure time each night, is
designed to find the rare events that require all-sky monitoring, including
transiting exoplanets around exotic stars like white dwarfs and hot subdwarfs,
stellar activity of all types within our galaxy, nearby supernovae, and other
transient events such as gamma ray bursts and gravitational-wave
electromagnetic counterparts. The system averages 5000 images per night with
~300,000 sources per image, and to date has taken over 3.0M images, totaling
250TB of raw data. The resulting light curve database has light curves for 9.3M
targets, averaging 32,600 epochs per target through 2018. This paper summarizes
the hardware and performance of the Evryscope, including the lessons learned
during telescope design, electronics design, a procedure for the precision
polar alignment of mounts for Evryscope-like systems, robotic control and
operations, and safety and performance-optimization systems. We measure the
on-sky performance of the Evryscope, discuss its data-analysis pipelines, and
present some example variable star and eclipsing binary discoveries from the
telescope. We also discuss new discoveries of very rare objects including 2 hot
subdwarf eclipsing binaries with late M-dwarf secondaries (HW Vir systems), 2
white dwarf / hot subdwarf short-period binaries, and 4 hot subdwarf reflection
binaries. We conclude with the status of our transit surveys, M-dwarf flare
survey, and transient detection.Comment: 24 pages, 24 figures, accepted PAS
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
cellSTORM - Cost-effective Super-Resolution on a Cellphone using dSTORM
Expensive scientific camera hardware is amongst the main cost factors in
modern, high-performance microscopes. Recent technological advantages have,
however, yielded consumer-grade camera devices that can provide surprisingly
good performance. The camera sensors of smartphones in particular have
benefited of this development. Combined with computing power and due to their
ubiquity, smartphones provide a fantastic opportunity for "imaging on a
budget". Here we show that a consumer cellphone is capable even of optical
super-resolution imaging by (direct) Stochastic Optical Reconstruction
Microscopy (dSTORM), achieving optical resolution better than 80 nm. In
addition to the use of standard reconstruction algorithms, we investigated an
approach by a trained image-to-image generative adversarial network (GAN). This
not only serves as a versatile technique to reconstruct video sequences under
conditions where traditional algorithms provide sub-optimal localization
performance, but also allows processing directly on the smartphone. We believe
that "cellSTORM" paves the way for affordable super-resolution microscopy
suitable for research and education, expanding access to cutting edge research
to a large community
HST Imaging in the Chandra Deep Field South: II. WFPC2 Observations of an X-Ray Flux-Limited Sample from the 1 Msec Chandra Catalog
We present HST/WFPC2 observations of a well-defined sample of 40 X-ray
sources with X-ray fluxes above the detection threshold of the full 1 Msec
Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS). The sensitivity and spatial resolution of our
HST observations are sufficient to detect the optical counterparts of 37 of the
X-ray sources, yielding information on their morphologies and environments. In
this paper we extend the results obtained in our previous study on the 300 ks
CDFS X-ray data (Schreier et al. 2001, Paper I). Specifically, we show that the
optical counterparts to the X-ray sources are divided into two distinct
populations: 1) an optically faint group with relatively blue colors, similar
to the faint blue field galaxy population, and 2) an optically brighter group,
including resolved galaxies with average colors significantly redder than the
corresponding bright field galaxy population. The brighter objects comprise a
wide range of types, including early and late type galaxies, starbursts, and
AGN. By contrast, we show that the faint blue X-ray population are most
consistent with being predominantly Type 2 AGN of low to moderate luminosity,
located at higher redshifts (z ~ 1 - 2). This conclusion is supported by
luminosity function models of the various classes of objects. Hence, the
combination of deep X-ray data with the high spatial resolution of HST are for
the first time allowing us to probe the faint end of the AGN luminosity
function at cosmologically interesting redshifts.Comment: AASTEX-Latex, 25 pages, 4 postscript figures, 9 jpg figures. Accepted
by the Astrophysical Journal. Full-size postscript images and figures,
included in the preprint, are available from:
http://www.stsci.edu/~koekemoe/papers/cdfs-hst
HETEROGENEOUS MULTI-SENSOR FUSION FOR 2D AND 3D POSE ESTIMATION
Sensor fusion is a process in which data from different sensors is combined to acquire an output that cannot be obtained from individual sensors. This dissertation first considers a 2D image level real world problem from rail industry and proposes a novel solution using sensor fusion, then proceeds further to the more complicated 3D problem of multi sensor fusion for UAV pose estimation.
One of the most important safety-related tasks in the rail industry is an early detection of defective rolling stock components. Railway wheels and wheel bearings are two components prone to damage due to their interactions with the brakes and railway track, which makes them a high priority when rail industry investigates improvements to current detection processes. The main contribution of this dissertation in this area is development of a computer vision method for automatically detecting the defective wheels that can potentially become a replacement for the current manual inspection procedure. The algorithm fuses images taken by wayside thermal and vision cameras and uses the outcome for the wheel defect detection. As a byproduct, the process will also include a method for detecting hot bearings from the same images. We evaluate our algorithm using simulated and real data images from UPRR in North America and it will be shown in this dissertation that using sensor fusion techniques the accuracy of the malfunction detection can be improved.
After the 2D application, the more complicated 3D application is addressed. Precise, robust and consistent localization is an important subject in many areas of science such as vision-based control, path planning, and SLAM. Each of different sensors employed to estimate the pose have their strengths and weaknesses. Sensor fusion is a known approach that combines the data measured by different sensors to achieve a more accurate or complete pose estimation and to cope with sensor outages. In this dissertation, a new approach to 3D pose estimation for a UAV in an unknown GPS-denied environment is presented. The proposed algorithm fuses the data from an IMU, a camera, and a 2D LiDAR to achieve accurate localization. Among the employed sensors, LiDAR has not received proper attention in the past; mostly because a 2D LiDAR can only provide pose estimation in its scanning plane and thus it cannot obtain full pose estimation in a 3D environment. A novel method is introduced in this research that enables us to employ a 2D LiDAR to improve the full 3D pose estimation accuracy acquired from an IMU and a camera. To the best of our knowledge 2D LiDAR has never been employed for 3D localization without a prior map and it is shown in this dissertation that our method can significantly improve the precision of the localization algorithm. The proposed approach is evaluated and justified by simulation and real world experiments
Algorithmic corrections for localization microscopy with sCMOS cameras - characterisation of a computationally efficient localization approach
Modern sCMOS cameras are attractive for single molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) due to their high speed but suffer from pixel non-uniformities that can affect localization precision and accuracy. We present a simplified sCMOS non-uniform noise model that incorporates pixel specific read-noise, offset and sensitivity variation. Using this model we develop a new weighted least squared (WLS) fitting method designed to remove the effect of sCMOS pixel non-uniformities. Simulations with the sCMOS noise model, performed to test under which conditions sCMOS specific localization corrections are required, suggested that pixel specific offsets should always be removed. In many applications with thick biological samples photon fluxes are sufficiently high that corrections of read-noise and sensitivity correction may be neglected. When correction is required, e.g. during fast imaging in thin samples, our WLS fit procedure recovered the performance of an equivalent sensor with uniform pixel properties and the fit estimates also attained the Cramer-Rao lower bound. Experiments with sub-resolution beads and a DNA origami test sample confirmed the results of the simulations. The WLS localization procedure is fast to converge, compatible with 2D, 3D and multi-emitter localization and thus provides a computationally efficient sCMOS localization approach compatible with most SMLM modalities
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