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Past projects of the group are listed below with links to the project's own webpages where applicable. The R&D activities of the group have been broadly categorised into 3 main divisions, within each category the projects are listed in reverse date order.
Astronomical Spectrographs and Instrumentation
Research, development and construction of spectrographic and other astronomical instrumentation. OSL's origins go back to the development of astronomical spectrographs, such as the UCL Echelle Spectrograph (UCLES) for the Anglo-Australian Telescope that was commissioned in 1988.
Projects:
- Optimised Stellar Coronagraph for Adaptive optics for the William Herschel Telescope (OSCA)
- Bench-mounted High-Resolution Spectrograph for Gemini South (bHROS).
- Past spectrograph projects - UCLES, UHRF, UES.
Active and Adaptive Optics
The measurement and automated compensation of image defects due to manufacturing errors, thermal and gravity-induced distortions, and turbulence or other inhomogeneities in the light-path.
Projects:
- Large carbon-fibre adaptive mirrors for the next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes.*
- Lightweight active and passive carbon fibre mirrors. Funded by both PPARC and industrial collaborators, this project looked at using carbon fibre composite material to a manufacture ultra-lightweight active mirror for space applications.
- Adaptive secondary mirror project
Optical Manufacture and Metrology
Modern technologies for the automated manufacture and measurement of optical surfaces.
Projects: