BOURGET , P.

The SODISM Telescope of the PICARD Space mission will perform diameter measurements by directly imaging the Sun on a CCD camera. An internal calibration system allows us to follow scale factor variations induced by instrument deformations resulting from temperature fluctuations on orbit or from others causes. We present this calibration system...

In order to optimize the occulting process of a Lyot coronagraph and to provide a high dynamic range imaging, a new kind of occulting disk has been developed at the National Observatory of Rio de Janeiro. A mercury (Hg) drop glued onto an optical window by molecular cohesion and compressed by a pellicle film is used as the occulting disk. The...

SAGE (SagnAc interferometer for Gravitational wavE) is a project for a space observatory based on multiple 12-U CubeSats in geosynchronous equatorial orbit. The objective is a fast track mission which would fill the observational gap between LISA and ground based observatories. With albeit a lower sensitivity, it would allow early investigation...

The sharpest images on Paranal are produced by the beam-combining instruments of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). Currently, the VLTI is close to completing a transitional period, moving away from the first generation of instruments (AMBER, MIDI) and offering new instruments and subsystems to the community. In this article, we...

International audience

We present our project on the revival of intensity interferometry with modern photonic technologies, and more specifically with conventional optical telescopes. This original approach is complementary to the work currently done aiming at applying intensity interferometry to Cherenkov telescopes. We briefly summarize the results obtained so far.

The Solar Diameter Imager and Surface Mapper (SODISM) on board the PICARD space mission provides wide-field images of the photosphere and chromosphere of the Sun in five narrow pass bands (centered at 215.0, 393.37, 535.7, 607.1, and 782.2 nm). PICARD is a space mission, which was successfully launched on 15 June 2010 into a Sun synchronous...