Optics

Lines of work and specialization

  • Optical design of astronomical instrumentation in visible and infrared ranges: telescopes, spectroscopy, imaging, photometry and polarimetry.
  • Optimization and maintenance of astronomical instrumentation optics.
  • Assembly, integration and verification of instrumentation.
  • Calibration of components, detectors, spectral lamps, astronomical filters, order sorting filters, systems alignment, optical and opto-mechanical adjustments, etc.

Instalations

  • Optics lab: This lab is inside an improved 100,000 class clean room, with temperature and humidity control. It is also built without windows to minimize the entry of radiation, both visible and infrared, which can introduce unwanted noise in the calibrations and experiments. All activities requiring controlled cleanliness, temperature, humidity and darkness. In this room is also kept instrumentation and optical components that require these special conditions.
     
    The access to this laboratory is through a pre-clean room containing the mandatory clothing for all personnel who enter the lab.  

  • Optics clean room: This room is a 100,000 class clean room used for assembly, integration and verification of the optical components to be mounted on the instruments developed at the IAA. It has a cold water supply and the access is made through a pre-clean room as well.

Equipment

At the optical lab, equipment and facilities are accomplished by all kinds of optical measurements: quality of optical surfaces, relative transmittance calibrations on astronomical filters, lenses, optical fibres for use in astronomy and so on; emissivity calibrations on spectral lamps, continuous lights or any other type of lamp (LEDs, light pollution...); detector calibrations in visible and infrared (CCDs, photomultipliers, NIR detectors...); alignment and integration of instruments; testing of prototypes and any other kind of optical tasks.
A good laboratory is justified for regular and systematic calibration of the IAA teams' equipment in order to ensure the optimization of optical and mechanical characteristics of highly sophisticated and high price equipment.
 
The major equipment available today are:

  • A Twyman-Green interferometer by Fisba Optik with a 100mm collimated laser beam of 632nm.
  • A Varian/Agilent UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometer Cary 5000 with an operating range between 175-3300 nm.
  • A wavefront sensor HASO3 32 by Imagine Optic, adapted to the Nasmyth foci of the 1.5m and 0.9m telescopes in the OSN, with an extended calibration range between 500nm and 900nm.
  • A IRIS908RS reflectometer which measures both reflectance (at 470nm, 530nm, 650nm and 880nm) and scattering (at 670nm), at different angles for flat or slightly curved surfaces.
  • A Jarrel-Ash monochromator of 0.5m focal length, with different gratings to optimally cover the range from 300nm to NIR.
  • A radiometer by UDT Instruments, Model S370, with two probes, one made of silicon and another made of germanium, covering the range between 300nm and 1.8μm.
  • A pyroelectric radiometer by Laser Precision, model RS-5900 with large spectral range.
  • A secondary standard Black Body.
  • An optical table to mount experiments and a basic set of mounts and light sources.
  • The laboratory is equipped with specific instrumentation and a wide variety of general purpose components such as lenses, optical systems, lasers, optical and infrared detectors, filters, light sources, spectral lamps, etc..
  • A He-Ne laser for alignment.
  • A semi-automatic data acquisition software, ADLO (Optics Laboratory Data Acquisition), controlled by a PC.

Services

  • Optics Metrology

    • Coplanarity measurements of optical surfaces.ç

    • Perpendicularity measurements of optical surfaces.

    • Transmittance/Absorbance/Reflectance of any type of optical filters (astronomical filters, windows, plane-parallel plates, density filters…) in the visible range and in the NIR.

    • Reflectance measurements of mirrors and coatings in the visible range and in the NIR.

    • Flatness measurement of flat mirrors, WFE measurement of plane-parallel plates, windows and any optical flat surface.

    • Spectral measurement of luminous flux in the visible range.

    • Spectral measurement of spectral lamps, continuum lamps and any emission source in the visible range and in the NIR.

    • Spectral response of optical systems, in transmission or in reflection in the visible range and in the NIR.

    • Spectral response of detectors.

  • Other services

Next services are availabe either at our labs and at customer site (in situ):

  • Characterization of the fibres transmittance and behaviour.
  • Characterization of the homogeneity of luminous sources.
  • Characterization of the homogeneity of optical systems.
  • Reflectivity measurement of coatings and surfaces.
  • Scattering measurement of coatings and surfaces.
  • CCD detectors characterization.
     

Consulting

  • Technical advice.

  • Technological support services.

Please, use the following contact form to request fares of any of these services or any other service or inquiry.

Some previous works

Staff

Name Degree
Bailén Martínez, Francisco Javier Tit. Superior
Pérez Medialdea, David Tit. Superior