Modern optical and infrared astronomical sites are getting used to a flexible way of operation, namely queue modes, allowing astronomical observations in the most appropriate weather conditions for each specific observing scientific program. The forecast of weather conditions is then a mandatory issue to plan in advance the observations queue for

This paper describes the flight control software of the wave-front correction system that flew on the 2009 science flight of the Sunrise balloon telescope. The software discussed here allowed fully automated operations of the wave-front sensor, communications with the adaptive optics sub-system, the pointing system, the instrument control unit and

The Wind Evaluation Breadboard (WEB) is a primary mirror and telescope simulator formed by seven aluminium segments, including position sensors, electromechanical support systems and support structures. WEB has been developed to evaluate technologies for primary mirror wavefront control and to evaluate the performance of the control of wind

We have carried out two extremely deep surveys with SPIRE, one of the two cameras on Herschel, at 250 μm, close to the peak of the far-infrared background. We have used the results to investigate the evolution of the rest-frame 250-μm luminosity function out to z = 2. We find evidence for strong evolution out to z ≃ 1 but evidence for at most weak

We present infrared colours (in the 25-500 μm spectral range) and UV to radio continuum spectral energy distributions of a sample of 51 nearby galaxies observed with SPIRE on Herschel. The observed sample includes all morphological classes, from quiescent ellipticals to active starbursts. Active galaxies have warmer colour temperatures than normal

This communication shows the feasibility study of a new instrument designed for the 4 meter European Solar Telescope (EST) for high resolution spectro-polarimetric observations. This paper is specifically focused on the spectrographs that allow the simultaneous observation of 5 visible and 4 near-infrared wavelengths (complying with the science