Novel scientific instruments are routinely used in Astrophysics Research. A deep understanding of instrument design is therefore crucial to pursue the most interesting questions, such as the number of planets in the solar neighborhood, or the nature of gravitational wave sources.
In the following course we will study optical design of telescopes, imagers and spectrographs from first principles, and learn how to analyze an existing system:
Week 1: Astronomical Instrumentation: An introduction.
Week 2: Aberration Theory and Wavefront Error Analysis.
Week 3: Telescope and Imagers.
Week 4: Introduction to Computer Aided Design Platforms (Code-V)
Week 5: Telescope and Imagers - CAD hands-on experience.
Week 6: Spectroscopy - Basic Principles.
Week 7: Spectroscopy: Dispersers, Echelles.
Week 8: End-to-End analysis: ULTRASAT (Telescope/Imager) and G-CLEF (Spectrograph)
Week 9: Introduction to image analysis - statistical inference and hypothesis testing
Week 10: Least squares
Week 11: Image calibration
Week 12: Photometry
Week 13: Astrometry
Week 14: Spectroscopy