Tunable laser techniques for improving the precision of observational astronomy

摘要

Improving the precision of observational astronomy requires not only new telescopes and instrumentation, butalso advances in observing protocols, calibrations and data analysis. The Laser Applications Group at the NationalInstitute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland has been applying advances in detectormetrology and tunable laser calibrations to problems in astronomy since 2007. Using similar measurement techniques,we have addressed a number of seemingly disparate issues: precision flux calibration for broad-bandimaging, precision wavelength calibration for high-resolution spectroscopy, and precision PSF mapping for fiberspectrographs of any resolution. In each case, we rely on robust, commercially-available laboratory technologythat is readily adapted to use at an observatory. In this paper, we give an overview of these techniques.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.