The Centre held this outreach meeting Optical Demands of Astronomy at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh on 16 June 2015.
The optical demands of astronomy have been primarily driven by the large science projects that have come from various global science funding programmes such as the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), but there are significant benefits from these demands for other commercial and military applications of large area optics and the associated detector and control systems. This event was organised with the aim of bringing together the UK’s commercial optical, high-resolution sensor and controls businesses with the relevant science and research communities to discover what is happening within their various different worlds and how these can be coupled together to create more business for the UK in these areas and how this can benefit the wider UK optics community.
Presentations were held on the day and a tour of the UK-ATC’s facilities were provided. Speakers included Prof Colin Cunningham, The UK Astronomy Technology Centre; Paul Morantz, EPSRC Centre in Ultra Precision, Cranfield University; Dr Colin Coates, Andor Technology; Dr Sarah Matthews, UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory; Prof Mihalis Mathioudakis, Queen’s University Belfast; Dr Thomas Westerhoff and Dr Peter Hartmann, SCHOTT AG, Germany; Dr Sonja Franke-Arnold, University of Glasgow and Prof Robert Thomson, Heriot Watt University.
The Centre would like to thank the UK-ATC and Andor Technology for supporting this event.
