Projects at the UK ATC
At any one time the UK ATC aims to have a variety of projects underway. In order to balance the workload whilst making efficient use of available resources, these projects are of different sizes and at any given time will be at different stages in their development.
The size and complexity of astronomical instrumentation continues to increase as astronomers progress further into the era of Very Large and Extremely Large Telescopes. As a result a large majority of the projects are done in collaboration with UK universities, international agencies and institutions and/or with industry.
Project Not Here?
If you do not see an entry for the project you are looking for we may have completed the project. Information about completed projects can be found by following the link below:
The following projects are in progress:
ALMA: Developing software for the international Atacama Large Millimetre Array
ELT: Planning and design work for future Extremely Large Telescopes and their instrumentation.
MIRI: A mid infrared instrument for the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope
OPTICON: The Europe wide Optical-infrared Co-ordination Network
UPF: UKIRT Planet Finder, (progeny of PRVS, The Precision Radial Velocity Spectrometer) - Searching for Earth-mass Planets
VISTA: Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy and its Infrared Camera VIRCAM
STFC: Investing In The Future 2010-15
Impact through inspiration and innovation
The Science and Technology Facilities Council today announced a five-year £2.4 billion investment strategy in world-leading multi-disciplinary science and technology, designed to deliver maximum scientific, societal, international and economic benefit for the United Kingdom in the current tougher financial environment.
Statement by the Director UK ATC on the STFC Press Release of Dec 16th 2009
"We welcome STFC’s continued support of the UK ATC in these difficult times and we are especially pleased to see that that our highest priority programme, the European Extremely Large Telescope for ESO, is given strong support in the future programme."
Professor Ian Robson
Director UK ATC