Review of Volume 4:
"The Handbook can be a good reference for a higher-degree science student approaching the subject or for an expert in a similar field in astronomical instrumentation. The reader requiring an in-depth presentation of a specific topic will be guided by the rich reference lists included at the end of each chapter."
The Observatory
Our goal is to produce a comprehensive handbook of the current state of the art of astronomical instrumentation with a forward view encompassing the next decade. The target audience is graduate students with an interest in astronomical instrumentation, as well as practitioners interested in learning about the state of the art in another wavelength band or field closely related to the one in which they currently work. We assume a working knowledge of the fundamental theory: optics, semiconductor physics, etc. The purpose of this handbook is to bring together some of the leading experts in the world to discuss the frontier of astronomical instrumentation across the electromagnetic spectrum and extending into multimessenger astronomy.
Contents:
- Volume 1: Radio Astronomical Instrumentation (Alex Wolszczan):
- Single-Dish Radio Telescopes (Christopher J Salter)
- Interferometry, Aperture Synthesis, and VLBI (E B Fomalont and Melvyn Wright)
- Low Frequency Arrays (S W Ellingson and G B Taylor)
- Feeds and Feed Systems (German Cortes-Medellin)
- Radio Receivers and Signal Processing (J Richard Fisher and Matthew A Morgan)
- The Measurement of Polarization in Radio Astronomy (Timothy Robishaw and Carl Heiles)
- Spectrometers and Polyphase Filterbanks in Radio Astronomy (Danny C Price)
- Pulsar Data Acquisition Systems (Duncan R Lorimer and Michael Kramer)
- Volume 2: UV, Optical & IR Instrumentation: Part 1 (Anna M Moore):
- Detectors:
- High Performance Silicon and III-Nitride-Based UV and UV/Optical Imaging Detectors (Shouleh Nikzad, Michael E Hoenk, J J Hennessy and L D Bell)
- Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (Benjamin A Mazin)
- Filters:
- Astronomical Filters (Michael Bessell and Gabe Bloxham)
- Dispersive Elements:
- Dispersive Elements (C S Froning and J C Clemens)
- Atmospheric Dispersion Correctors:
- Atmospheric Dispersion Correctors (Andrew C Phillips)
- Astrophotonics:
- Photonic Fibers and Waveguides (Jon S Lawrence and Sergio G Leon-Saval)
- Deformable Mirrors:
- Tip/Tilt Mirrors (Jean-Christophe Sinquin and Pierre Morin)
- Stacked Array Deformable Mirrors (Jean-Christophe Sinquin and Hubert Pagès)
- Wavefront Sensing Techniques:
- Shack–Hartmann Wavefront Sensors (Alastair Basden)
- Curvature Wavefront Sensing: Simple, Elegant, and Efficient (Olivier Lai and Mark Chun)
- Wavefront Reconstruction and Control (Marcos A van Dam)
- Calibration Techniques:
- Calibration Techniques (Dae-Sik Moon)
- Adaptive Optics:
- Adaptive Optics: Single-Conjugate Natural Guide Star AO (Donald Gavel)
- Single Conjugate Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics (Peter Wizinowich)
- Automated Adaptive Optics (Christoph Baranec, Reed Riddle and Nicholas M Law)
- Ground Layer Adaptive Optics (Miska Le Louarn)
- Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (Donald Gavel)
- Extreme Adaptive Optics (Markus Kasper)
- Solar Adaptive Optics (T Rimmele, J Marino, D Schmidt and F Wöger)
- Volume 3: UV, Optical & IR Instrumentation: Part 2 (Anna M Moore):
- Interferometers:
- Speckle Interferometers (Elliott P Horch)
- Amplitude Interferometry (William J Tango)
- Intensity Interferometry (Dainis Dravins)
- Dispersed Interferometers (David J Erskine)
- Nulling Interferometry (Eugene Serabyn)
- Lunar and Planetary Occultations (Andrea Richichi)
- Astrometric Interferometry (Michael J Ireland and Julien Woillez)
- Novel Concepts, from Interferometers to Hypertelescopes (Antoine Labeyrie)
- Wide Field Imagers:
- Visible Imagers (Satoshi Miyazaki)
- Wide-Field Near Infrared Imaging (Gavin Dalton)
- Spectrographs:
- Low- and Medium-Resolution Spectrographs for Astronomy (Andrew Sheinis)
- Ultra-High Precision Doppler Spectrographs (Francesco Pepe)
- Spectropolarimetry (Christoph U Keller and Frans Snik)
- Integral Field Techniques (Fraser Clarke and Matthias Tecza)
- Multi-Object Spectrographs (Suzanne Ramsay)
- Tunable Filters (Joss Bland-Hawthorn and Gerald Cecil)
- Coronagraphs:
- Solar Coronagraphs (Douglas Rabin)
- Focal-Plane Phase-Mask Coronagraphy (Dimitri Mawet)
- Pupil-Plane Amplitude Coronagraphy (N Jeremy Kasdin, Robert J Vanderbei, and Neil T Zimmerman)
- Pupil-Plane Phase Apodization (Matthew A Kenworthy, Johanan L Codona and Frans Snik)
- UV Instrumentation:
- UV Instrumentation (James C Green)
- Volume 4: X-Ray Astronomical Instrumentation (David N Burrows):
- X-ray Optics:
- X-ray Telescopes Based on Wolter-I Optics (Giovanni Pareschi, Daniele Spiga, and Carlo Pelliciari)
- Silicon Pore Optics (Maximilien J Collon)
- Silicon Meta-Shell X-ray Optics for Astronomy (William W Zhang)
- Adjustable X-ray Optics (D A Schwartz, S Trolier-McKinstry, M Wallace, J I Ramirez and T N Jackson)
- Lobster Eye Optics (Richard Willingale)
- Lightweight Full-Shell X-ray Optics (Brian D Ramsey and Stephen L O'Dell)
- X-ray Multilayer Coatings (David L Windt)
- X-ray Detectors:
- X-ray Charge-Coupled Devices (Hiroshi Tsunemi)
- DEPFETs as High Speed Spectroscopic X-ray Imagers (Gerhard Lutz, Petra Majewski and Lothar Strüder)
- X-ray Hybrid CMOS Detectors in Astronomy (Abraham D Falcone)
- Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerators for X-ray Detectors (Keisuke Shinozaki and Kazuhisa Mitsuda)
- X-ray Gratings:
- Critical Angle Transmission Grating Spectrometers (David P Huenemoerder and Ralf K Heilmann)
- Off-plane X-ray Gratings (Randall L McEntaffer and Casey T DeRoo)
- X-ray Polarimetry:
- X-ray Polarimetry (Philip Kaaret)
- Volume 5: Gamma-Ray and Multimessenger Astronomical Instrumentation (David N Burrows):
- Laue Lenses in Hard X-ray Astronomy (Enrico Virgilli)
- Scintillation Detectors for X-ray and γ-ray Astronomy (Mark L McConnell)
- Compton Telescopes (James M Ryan)
- Gamma-Ray Pair Conversion Imaging Telescopes (W B Atwood)
- Event Reconstruction and Source Analysis Methods for Pair-Conversion Telescopes (Eric Charles and James Chiang)
- Atmospheric Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Telescopes (Jamie Holder)
- Water Cherenkov Detectors for Gamma-Ray Astronomy (Gus Sinnis)
- Neutrino Detectors (D F Cowen and I Taboada)
- Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatories (Guido Mueller)
Readership: Graduate students and practitioners in the field of astronomical instrumentation.
About the Editor-in-Chief

David N Burrows is Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Pennsylvania State University, and led the team that built and operated the X-ray Telescope on NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift satellite. His research interests include X-ray instrumentation, gamma-ray burst afterglows and supernova remnants. With over 300 refereed publications, he has contributed to many breakthroughs in the field of X-ray astronomy, such as the discovery of X-ray shadows by interstellar clouds, the first X-ray CCD observations (of SN1987A and Puppis A), the first precise localization of a short GRB afterglow, and the discovery of relativistic jet emission from a tidal disruption event. Burrows has been included in the list of top 1% highly cited researchers in the field of Space Science. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has won the Maria and Eric Muhlmann Award and the Bruno Rossi Prize.
About the Editors
Alex Wolszczan is an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Pennsylvania State University and the director of Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds. His research interests focus on astronomy of extrasolar planets and radio emission from ultracool dwarf stars. He has also worked on topics in relativistic gravitation, searches for and timing of radio pulsars, and the physics of the interstellar medium. Dr Wolszczan is best known for his discovery, in 1992, and the subsequent confirmation, of the first planets orbiting a star other than the Sun. He is also a discoverer and co-discoverer of many pulsars and several planets around giant stars. He has received "The Best of What's New" Grand Award of the Popular Science Magazine in 1994, the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 1995, and the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize of the American Astronomical Society in 2000. Dr Wolszczan is a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received a doctorate in physics in 1975 from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland.
Anna Moore is the Vice-Chancellor's Entrepreneurial professor at the Australian National University and was awarded a Top 100 Women in Innovation by the Australian Financial Review. She is a world-leading expert in astronomical instrumentation, deploying 23 astronomical instruments over her career so far, and a global leader in the emerging field of transient infrared astronomy. She was director of the Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Centre (AITC) from 2017–2021, and is currently director of the Australian National University Institute for Space (InSpace). Professor Moore was part of the expert reference group that created the Australian Space Agency. Her expertise is critical to the space industry in Australia, NASA, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, and other global space industry partners.