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The Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
Gorjian, Varoujan; Lazio, Joseph; Levin, Steven +6 more
This paper reports the results from a student-led Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), also known as technosignatures, targeting the plane of the Milky Way as a part of the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) collaboration between the Lewis Center for Educational Research (LCER) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Students as…
Embedded Star Catalog Calculation Tool for Autonomous Star Trackers
Bürger, Karoline C.; Fialho, Fábio de O.; Aykroyd, Christopher R. B.
Autonomous star trackers are crucial attitude sensors for spacecraft three-axis control. They are the most accurate commercial-off-the-shelf sensors available. An autonomous star tracker is an optoelectronic device that autonomously determines the spacecraft's attitude, using an embedded star catalog that is compared to in-orbit images to perform …
Constraints on Testing Post-Newtonian Gravity with Scanning Space Astrometry
Bucciarelli, Beatrice; Lattanzi, Mario G.; Crosta, Mariateresa +4 more
High-precision astrometry has the capability of testing General Relativity in the framework of the parametrized post-Newtonian formalism (PPN). Accurate measurements of gravitational light deflection over the entire celestial sphere open up a potential opportunity for determining the post-Newtonian parameter γ, which governs the deflection strengt…
A Search for Self-lensing Binaries with TESS and Constraints on their Occurrence Rate
El-Badry, Kareem; Yamaguchi, Natsuko; Sorabella, Nicholas M.
Five self-lensing binaries (SLBs) have been discovered with Kepler light curves. They contain white dwarfs (WDs) in AU-scale orbits that gravitationally lens solar-type companions. Forming SLBs likely requires common envelope evolution when the WD progenitor is an AGB star and has a weakly bound envelope. No SLBs have yet been discovered with data…
The ArgusSpec Prototype: Autonomous Spectroscopic Follow-up of Flares Detected by Large Array Telescopes
Law, Nicholas M.; Corbett, Hank; Carney, Jonathan +7 more
ArgusSpec is a prototype autonomous spectroscopic follow-up instrument designed to characterize flares detected by the Argus Pathfinder telescope array by taking short exposure (30 s) broadband spectra (370–750 nm) at low resolutions (R ∼ 150 at 500 nm). The instrument is built from consumer off-the-shelf astronomical equipment, assembled inside a…
AstroSat/UVIT Study of the Diffuse Ultraviolet Radiation in the Dwarf Galaxy Holmberg II
Shalima, P.; Gogoi, Rupjyoti; Bordoloi, Olag Pratim +4 more
We present measurements of diffuse ultraviolet (UV) emission in the dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg II obtained with the Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) instrument onboard AstroSat, India's first multiwavelength space mission. With a spatial resolution of 1.″2–1.″6, these are the highest resolution UV observations of the galaxy to date. We f…
Rubin Observatory LSST Transients and Variable Stars Roadmap
Hartigan, Patrick; Buckley, David; Davenport, James R. A. +79 more
The Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) holds the potential to revolutionize time domain astrophysics, reaching completely unexplored areas of the Universe and mapping variability time scales from minutes to a decade. To prepare to maximize the potential of the Rubin LSST data for the exploration of the transient and variable Univ…
Spectroscopic Time Series Performance of the Mid-infrared Instrument on the JWST
Espinoza, Néstor; Bell, Taylor J.; Bouwman, Jeroen +21 more
We present here the first ever mid-infrared spectroscopic time series observation of the transiting exoplanet L 168-9 b with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the James Webb Space Telescope. The data were obtained as part of the MIRI commissioning activities, to characterize the performance of the Low Resolution Spectroscopy (LRS) mode for the…
Spectroscopic Time-series Performance of JWST/NIRSpec from Commissioning Observations
Nikolov, Nikolay; Sing, David K.; Böker, Torsten +22 more
We report on James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) commissioning observations of the transiting exoplanet HAT-P-14 b, obtained using the Bright Object Time Series (BOTS) mode of the NIRSpec instrument with the G395H/F290LP grating/filter combination (3-5 µm). While the data were used primarily to verify that the NIRSpec BOTS mode is working as e…
The Large Array Survey Telescope-System Overview and Performances
Gal-Yam, A.; Kowalski, M.; Sadeh, I. +38 more
The Large Array Survey Telescope (LAST) is a wide-field visible-light telescope array designed to explore the variable and transient sky with a high cadence. LAST will be composed of 48, 28 cm f/2.2 telescopes (32 already installed) equipped with full-frame backside-illuminated cooled CMOS detectors. Each telescope provides a field of view (FoV) o…