The Arcanum mission is a proposed L-class mother-daughter spacecraft configuration for the Neptunian system, the mass and volume of which have been maximised to highlight the wide-ranging science the next generation of launch vehicles will enable. The spacecraft is designed to address a long-neglected but high-value region of the outer Solar System, showing that current advances make such a mission more feasible than ever before. This paper adds to a series on Arcanum and specifically provides progress on the study of areas identified as critical weaknesses by the 2013–2022 decadal survey and areas relevant to the recently published Voyage 2050 recommendations to the European Space Agency (ESA).

Students took an assembly-type telescope kit from a public elementary school and brought it to their homes in 2019. Three classes attempted to observe the Moon at home using the Kaifu-NAOJ Telescope Kit. As a result, all children observed the Moon at home using the kit. From their observations, around 90% identified the existence of craters and understood the reflection of sunlight on the Moon’s surface. As Covid-19 prevention measures in education, we propose the introduction of at-home telescopic observations for STEAM activities.

Commercial excavators often find that their way back to the past runs through relatively recent structures. What should we do with them? Intellectually sensitive modern excavators, like our authors, are beginning to convince us that these recent constructions not only matter in themselves, but may have interesting links to what lies beneath. Here they introduce us to the foundations of an early telescope, a monument that takes its context both from the much-investigated lands of West Cambridge, and the more abstract landscape of early science. Forcing archaeology to ask fresh questions and make ambitious connections is only proper in a place heavy with the aroma of investigative scholarship.

VT (Visible Telescope) is an instrument onboard SVOM (Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor) satellite working in the visible band, which will play an important role in follow-up of two categories of GRBs: very distant events at higher redshift and faint/soft nearby events in SVOM mission. To fulfill these primary science requirements, decent sensitivity and wavelength coverage are fundamental for VT design. VT performance and data process strategy were successfully studied on its feasibility in Phase A, which is presented in this poster. Additionally, preliminary VT image simulator is also introduced here.

The Sunrise balloon-borne solar observatory consists of a 1m aperture Gregory telescope, a UV filter imager, an imaging vector polarimeter, an image stabilization system and further infrastructure. The first science flight of Sunrise yielded high-quality data that reveal the structure, dynamics and evolution of solar convection, oscillations and magnetic fields at a resolution of around 100 km in the quiet Sun. Here we describe very briefly the mission and the first results obtained from the Sunrise data, which include a number of discoveries.

During the very last year of what he himself described “as the best [eighteen] years of his life” spent at the University of Padua, Galileo first observed the heavens with a telescope. In order to appreciate the marvel and the true significance of those observations we must appreciate both the intellectual climate in Europe and the critical intellectual period through which Galileo himself was passing at the time those observations were made. Through his studies on motion Galileo had come to have serious doubts about the Aristotelian concept of nature. What he sensed was lacking was a true physics. He was very acute, therefore, when he came to sense the significance of his observations of the moon, of the phases of Venus, of the moons of Jupiter and of the Milky Way. The preconceptions of the Aristotelians were crumbling before his eyes. He had remained silent long enough, over a three month period, in his contemplations of the heavens. It was time to organize his thoughts and tell what he had seen and what he thought it meant. It was time to publish! In so doing he would become one of the pioneers of modern science. For the first time in over 2,000 years new significant observational data had been put at the disposition of anyone who cared to think, not in abstract preconceptions but in obedience to what the universe had to say about itself.

In the first part of this paper we briefly discuss some historical constraints useful for understanding when Galileo for the first time aimed his telescope to the Moon which most probably was the first astronomical object observed by the Scientist. In the second part we discuss the dates of the observations on which the etchings, published in the Sidereus Nuncius, are based. It results that the five etchings refer to observations performed in December 1609 and January 1610. The measurement of the position, of some peculiar structures of the lunar surface clearly represented by Galileo in the etchings, shows that he was very careful in trying to produce a faithful graphical rendering of what he was observing.

The International Year of Astronomy marks the 400th anniversary of Kepler's Astronomia nova and the first use of the telescope for astronomy, most notably leading to Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (1610). Kepler's book for the first time argued strongly for a physical basis to astronomical explanations. Galileo's work showed that a coherent understanding was more important for scientific progress than specific proofs. The efforts of both astronomers undermined the traditional geocentric cosmology and essentially brought about the birth of modern astronomy.

Peru and France are to conclude an agreement to provide Peru with an astronomical observatory equipped with a 60-cm diameter telescope. The principal aims of this project are to establish and develop research and teaching in astronomy. Since 2004, a team of researchers from Paris Observatory has been working with the University of Cusco (UNSAAC) on the educational, technical and financial aspects of implementing this venture. During an international astronomy conference in Cusco in July 2009, the foundation stone of the future Peruvian Observatory was laid at the top of Pachatusan Mountain. UNSAAC, represented by its Rector, together with the town of Oropesa and the Cusco regional authority, undertook to make the sum of 300,000€ available to the project. An agreement between Paris Observatory and UNSAAC now enables Peruvian students to study astronomy through online teaching.

In the recent times, there has been a noticeable increase in interest about NEOs. In the light of results of recent NEO surveys the need for continuous follow-up astrometry to secure the orbits of the discovered bodies has risen.

The Klet' Observatory Near Earth and other Unusual Objects Observation Team and Telescope, project KLENOT, started in 2002. It is dedicated to confirmation, follow-up, and recovery of NEOs. For this task the 1.06-m KLENOT telescope, equipped with a high-efficiency CCD is used. Since it was set in service in March 2002, a significant number of results have been obtained. For instance, 10,000 positions have been determined, more than 400 confirmations made, including 16 recoveries and 104 Virtual Impactors measured.

An important part of NEO search is the discovery of comets. Therefore an inseparable component of NEO follow-up includes the detection of possible cometary features of newly discovered bodies and the confirmation of Near Earth Comets (NEC).

In the next decade, surveys will be characterized by several aspects. Pan-STARRS opens the question whether “classical” confirmation and early follow-up of newly discovered NEO candidates will be necessary by others, and we discuss the need for possible changes in existing system of follow-up process. The most important challenge for follow-up will likely become the NEOs which are in urgent need of astrometric positions over longer arcs including Virtual Impactors, radar, and mission targets. The observing strategies and obtained results of the KLENOT Project will be presented as well as future plans will be discussed.

One of the most important duties of NEOs scientists and research institutions is to maintain contact with the public. NEO related issues have outstanding educational value and outreach potential. Nowadays the Internet has proved itself to be an excellent mean of bringing NEO knowledge to a wider audience.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is currently by far the most ambitious proposed ground-based optical survey. With initial funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and private sponsors, the design and development efforts are well underway at many institutions, including top universities and national laboratories. Solar System mapping is one of the four key scientific design drivers, with emphasis on efficient Near-Earth Object (NEO) and Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) detection, orbit determination, and characterization. The LSST system will be sited at Cerro Pachon in northern Chile. In a continuous observing campaign of pairs of 15 s exposures of its 3,200 megapixel camera, LSST will cover the entire available sky every three nights in two photometric bands to a depth of V=25 per visit (two exposures), with exquisitely accurate astrometry and photometry. Over the proposed survey lifetime of 10 years, each sky location would be visited about 1000 times, with the total exposure time of 8 hours distributed over several broad photometric bandpasses. The baseline design satisfies strong constraints on the cadence of observations mandated by PHAs such as closely spaced pairs of observations to link different detections and short exposures to avoid trailing losses. Due to frequent repeat visits LSST will effectively provide its own follow-up to derive orbits for detected moving objects.

Detailed modeling of LSST operations, incorporating real historical weather and seeing data from Cerro Pachon, shows that LSST using its baseline design cadence could find 90% of the PHAs with diameters larger than 250 m, and 75% of those greater than 140 m within ten years. However, by optimizing sky coverage, the ongoing simulations suggest that the LSST system, with its first light in 2013, can reach the Congressional mandate of cataloging 90% of PHAs larger than 140m by 2020. In addition to detecting, tracking, and determining orbits for these PHAs, LSST will also provide valuable data on their physical and chemical characteristics (accurate color and variability measurements), constraining PHA properties relevant for risk mitigation strategies. In order to fulfill the Congressional mandate, a survey with an etendue of at least several hundred m2deg2, and a sophisticated and robust data processing system is required. It is fortunate that the same hardware, software and cadence requirements are driven by science unrelated to NEOs: LSST reaches the threshold where different science drivers and different agencies (NSF, DOE and NASA) can work together to efficiently achieve seemingly disjoint, but deeply connected, goals.

Chinese scientists have contributed many research works to the field of asteroid surveying and related topics. In the early 1960s, Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) began observing asteroids and found over 130 new numbered asteroids during the following decades. The Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program (SCAP) of Beijing Astronomical Observatory (BAO) started in 1995 and found 575 asteroids in several years.

NEOs represent a great threat to the near-Earth environment by closely approaching Earth or even impacting with Earth. After the impact of comet SL9 on Jupiter, Chinese proposed to build a NEO Search Telescope to take part in the joint international NEO survey. It is a 1.0/1.2 m Schmidt telescope with a 4K×4K drift scanning CCD detector. Here we elaborate upon its applications to objects of scientific interest, its parameters, and its observing station.

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy is a funded project to repeatedly survey the entire visible sky to faint limiting magnitudes (mR ~ 24). It will be composed of four 1.8m diameter apertures each outfitted with fast readout orthogonal transfer Giga-pixel CCD cameras. A single aperture prototype telescopes has achieved first-light in the second half of 2006 with the full system becoming available a few years later. Roughly 60% of the surveying will be suitable for discovery of new solar system objects and it will cover the ecliptic, opposition and low solar-elongation regions. In a single lunation Pan-STARRS will detect about five times more solar system objects than the entire currently known sample. Within its first year Pan-STARRS will have detected 20,000 Kuiper Belt Objects and by the end of its ten year operational lifetime we expect to have found 107 Main Belt objects and achieve ~90% observational completeness for all NEOs larger than ~300m diameter. With these data in hand Pan-STARRS will revolutionize our knowledge of the contents and dynamical structure of the solar system.

We discuss the potential contribution of the Discovery Channel Telescope (or a clone) to a detection program aimed at discovering 90% of potentially hazardous objects (PHOs) larger than 140 m in diameter. Three options are described, each involving different levels of investment. We believe that LSST, Pan-STARRS, and DCT, working in a coordinated fashion, offer a cost-effective, low-risk way to accomplish the objectives of the extended NEO search program.

At Pulkovo Observatory, we conduct observations of various Solar System bodies: major planets, their satellites, comets, and asteroids, including Near Earth Objects. For these purposes, a robotic telescope was constructed on the base of the ZA–320 Mirror Astrograph (D=320 mm, F=3200 mm). It can perform CCD observations of Solar System bodies with the limiting magnitude of up to 19.0.

Independent ephemeris support is provided by the EPOS software package developed at Pulkovo Observatory; it includes tracing of catalogues of comets and asteroids, regular ephemeris calculations, and control of observations. CCD frame processing is done by the Apex automatic data reduction package developed at Pulkovo Observatory.

In 2001-2006, more than 12000 observations of minor Solar System bodies were collected, including more than 6000 positions of 656 NEAs, about 1200 observations of 27 comets, and about 2000 observations of major planets satellites. The mean accuracy of obtained positions is 0″.09−0″.40. Results of observations are regularly submitted to the Minor Planet Center.

Currently, ZA–320M is the 16-th of more than 680 telescopes in the worldwide rating of those that observe NEAs (by the number of observations).

In the near future, our group is planning to start observations with another two robotic telescopes: MTM–500 (D=500 mm, F=4000 mm Maksutov) and 1-meter telescope (D=1000 mm, F=1200 mm) of the Pulkovo mountain station at Northern Caucasus (Kislovodsk, 2100 m above sea level). These two instruments will allow to increase the number of observations, their accuracy, and limiting magnitude (up to 20.5 mag).