The laser ranging interferometer (LRI) instrument has been successfully switched on aboard the recently launched twin US/German Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellites
Professor Dr Martin Roth, at research centre Innofspec Potsdam, discusses the role that fibre Bragg gratings and other photonics components could play in transforming astronomy
The stringent requirements for ground and space-based telescopes are driving the development of innovative materials and optical systems, Matthew Dale reports
The UK Space Agency is working with Glyndŵr University’s OpTIC Technology Centre and the SETsquared Partnership to launch an entrepreneurial programme to get more entrepreneurs into space
German photonics firm Toptica has signed an updated contract with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) for the production of four more lasers to be used in the adaptive optics system of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT)
The Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) has made its first observations. Installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, ESPRESSO will search for exoplanets by looking at the minuscule changes in the light of their host stars.
Casting has begun for the fifth mirror of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), a 24.5-metre near infrared and visible telescope comprising seven 8.4-metre mirror segments
PI (Physik Instrumente) designed a new type of actuator that would meet the extreme requirements and win the European South Observatory (ESO) contract
The Optical Society (OSA) has announced that the Guide Star Alliance has been selected to receive the 2017 Paul F Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award
An adaptive optics system, which has been more than a decade in the making, has seen first light as part of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope on the Cerro Paranal mountain in Chile