Instrumentation

Questions in this category have been asked by PJ,MT

• What do you know about WMAP?
• What spacecraft have gone up recently?
• What's the latest, coolest instrumentation?

• what do you know about HST?
• why do we build large telescopes on the ground, if HST has a much better resolution with just 2.3m?

• If we observed a neutron star in LMC from a X-ray telescope, are we able to use a optical telescope to find out if it has a optical companion?
  • How many stars in LMC?
  • What's the angular resolution for a X-ray telescope (some early X-ray telescope before Chandra)?
  • What's the angular resolution for a typical optical telescope?
  • In the field we observed the neutron star, how many stars we would observed in optical?

• What's the typical spectral resolution for a optical telescope?
• What distances can we get to using parallax measurements?
• What is the photometric precision that can be achieved from the ground? What limits the attainable photometric precision?

• At optical wavelengths, what's the typical limit to the effective telescope size set by atmospheric seeing? (RS)
• What is the seeing at Magellan on a good night? (RS)
• What is the difference between atmospheric effects in optical and radio astronomy? (RS)

• How was the frequency band of MWA chosen? (I'm in MWA; other experimentalists could get an analogous question). (RS)

• What are the following and to what sorts (read: wavelengths) of astronomers care about them? (RS)
  • Adaptive Optics
    • How does complexity of the AO system scale with aperture size?
    • What is the characteristic size of turbulent cells?
  • Closure phase
    • What are measurements int he UV plane called?
  • Bolometer
  • CCD
    • How do X-ray and optical astronomers use CCDs differently?
  • Grazing incidence optics?
  • Downmixing

Astrophysics