Tunable Imaging Filters in Astronomy

Abstract

While tunable filters are a recent development in night time astronomy, they have long been used in other physical sciences, e.g. solar physics, remote sensing and underwater communications. With their ability to tune precisely to a given wavelength using a bandpass optimized for the experiment, tunable filters are already producing some of the deepest narrowband images to date of astrophysical sources. Furthermore, some classes of tunable filters can be used in fast telescope beams and therefore allow for narrowband imaging over angular fields of more than a degree over the sky.