The United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre

The UK ATC Working with Collaborators

As telescopes, and consequently instrumentation, have increased in size, complexity and cost, most of the associated engineering projects have become collaborative. The UK ATC has extensive experience in such collaborative work as indicated by these examples.

SCUBA 2

The UK ATC is leading the SCUBA 2 project, proving the Scientific, Project Management and Systems Engineering roles in addition to extensive engineering work in all disciplines. The other partners for the main Instrument are Cardiff University, Scottish Microelectronics Centre at the University of Edinburgh, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the USA, the Universities of Waterloo and British Columbia in Canada and the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hawaii (JAC). The Canadian Universities of Montreal and Lethbridge are also providing add-on systems.

KMOS

Durham University provide the Principal Investigator for this ESO Instrument. The UK ATC provide the Instrument Scientist, Project Management, Systems Engineering roles in addition to several workpackages. Other partners include Oxford University, MPIA Heidelberg, Munich University and ESO themselves.

JWST MIRI

Dr Gillian Wright of the UK ATC is European Principal Investigator for MIRI, one of three instruments for the James Webb Space Telescope. The UK ATC has leading Systems roles for the whole Instrument and are also providing the Spectrometer pre-optics and Calibration Sources. In total there are some 21 participating organisations within Europe alone in addition to USA contributions primarily from the Jet Propulsion Lab. The UK contributors include CCLRC, University of Leicester, Cardiff University and EADS Astrium Ltd.

Full details at http://www.roe.ac.uk/ukatc/consortium/miri/organization/participation.html

Gemini Phase 2 Instrument Studies

The UK ATC had/has leading roles (Project Management, Systems Engineering) in three Conceptual Design Studies for the Gemini Telescope. On the HRNIRS Study we also provided the PI and worked with the University of Honolulu. On the PRVS Study our partners were the University of Honolulu again in addition to Pennsylvania State University and the University of Hertfordshire (PI). The WFMOS Instrument requires a much larger collaboration with the PI at the California Institute of Technology. The other partners are the Applied Research Labs at Pennsylvania State University, the Brazilian National Astronomy Institute, LNA, the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, University College London and University of Edinburgh. The Science Team also included participation from Canada, Australia, Japan and Europe.

ELT Instrument Studies

The UK ATC is working on several Instrument Studies for an Extremely Large Telescope, some with EU funding and some with ESO funding. All involve significant European wide collaboration.

Opticon

With a title of ‘Optical Infrared Coordination Network for Astronomy’ it is not surprising to hear that the list of partners is extensive (see http://www.astro-opticon.org/index.html). The UK ATC provide the Project Manager and lead the Key Technologies and Smart Focal Planes sub-networks in addition to participation in many others.