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A long-standing and profound problem in astronomy is the difficulty in obtaining deep near-infrared observations due to the extreme brightness and variability of the night sky at these wavelengths. A solution to this problem is crucial if we are to obtain the deepest possible observations of the early Universe, as redshifted starlight from distant galaxies appears at these wavelengths. The atmospheric emission between 1,000 and 1,800 nm arises almost entirely from a forest of extremely bright, very narrow hydroxyl emission lines that varies on timescales of minutes. The astronomical community has long envisaged the prospect of selectively removing these lines, while retaining high throughput between them. Here we demonstrate such a filter for the first time, presenting results from the first on-sky tests. Its use on current 8 m telescopes and future 30 m telescopes will open up many new research avenues in the years to come.
In the present work, the density distribution of rhodamine 6G ions (R6G) in the gas phase and the droplets of an electrospray plume was studied by spatial and spectral imaging. The intention is to contribute to the fundamental understanding of the release mechanism of gaseous R6G in the electrospray ionization (ESI) process. Furthermore, the influence of ESI-parameters on the release efficiency of R6G, e. g. solvent flow, R6G and salt concentration were examined via direct fluorescence imaging of R6G. A solvent-shift of the fluorescence maximum,lambda(max) = 555 nm in methanolic solution and lambda(max) = 505 nm in gas phase, allows the discrimination between solvated and gaseous R6G. Two experimental setups were used for our measurements. In the first experiment, the R6G fluorescence and the light scattered from the spray plume were imaged in two spatial dimensions using a tunable wavelength filter. The second experiment was designed for obtaining 1-dimensional spatially resolved emission spectra of the spray. Here, the intensity distribution of solvated and gaseous R6G as well as scattered light (lambda = 355 nm) were measured simultaneously.
The results show the distribution of gaseous R6G in the plane, orthogonal to the ESI capillary, decreasing slightly towards the spray center and showing maxima at the cone margins. The distribution of gaseous R6G confirms the preferred release of gaseous ions from nano-droplets, indicating the ion evaporation model (IEM) to be the dominating release mechanism. Up to now, only a few fluorescence spectra of ionic compounds in the gas phase were published because the measurement of emission spectra of mass-selected ions in an ion trap is experimentally challenging. The fluorescence spectrum of gaseous lucigenin at atmospheric pressure is reported for the first time. This spectrum of lucigenin in the gas phase exhibits a blue shift of about Delta lambda = 10 nm in comparison to the corresponding spectrum in methanol.
Novel fluorescent nanosensors, based on a naphthyridine receptor, have been developed for the detection of guanosine nucleotides, and both their sensitivity and selectivity to various nucleotides were evaluated. The nanosensors were constructed from polystyrene nanoparticles functionalized by (N-(7-((3-aminophenyl) ethynyl)-1,8-naphthyridin- 2-yl) acetamide) via carbodiimide ester activation. We show that this naphthyridine nanosensor binds guanosine nucleotides preferentially over adenine, cytosine, and thymidine nucleotides. Upon interaction with nucleotides, the fluorescence of the nanosensor is gradually quenched yielding Stern-Volmer constants in the range of 2.1 to 35.9mM(-1). For all the studied quenchers, limits of detection (LOD) and tolerance levels for the nanosensors were also determined. The lowest (3 sigma) LOD was found for guanosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (cGMP) and it was as low as 150 ng/ml. In addition, we demonstrated that the spatial arrangement of bound analytes on the nanosensors' surfaces is what is responsible for their selectivity to different guanosine nucleotides. We found a correlation between the changes of the fluorescence signal and the number of phosphate groups of a nucleotide. Results of molecular modeling and zeta-potential measurements confirm that the arrangement of analytes on the surface provides for the selectivity of the nanosensors. These fluorescent nanosensors have the potential to be applied in multi-analyte, array-based detection platforms, as well as in multiplexed microfluidic systems.