Astronomical optics articles from across Nature Portfolio

A research team from the High-Tech Industry Unit at TNO reports a method to identify satellites using retroreflecting tags with spectral signatures mounted on these satellites. The approach reduces the complexity of the observation system and does not require any power sources on board.

A self-contained ring laser interferometre measures length-of-day variations due to global mass transport phenomena with a precision of a few milliseconds over several months of measurements.

CIOMP report their progress in high-accuracy manufacturing of the world’s largest SiC aspheric mirror. The final surface figure error is 15.2 nm RMS and aerial density is less than 120 kg/m².

A meta-imaging sensor detects an extra-fine 4D light field distribution using a vibrating microlens array, enabling high-resolution 3D photography up to a gigapixel with fast aberration correction, demonstrated on a telescope aimed at the Moon.

Adaptive optics wavefront sensors need to be in a pupil plane and are insensitive to certain wavefront-error modes. The authors present a wavefront sensor based on a photonic lantern fibre-mode-converter and deep learning, which can be placed at the same focal plane accessing nondegenerate wavefront information and reconstructing the wavefront.

Dr Y. Shirley Meng, Professor of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and Chief Scientist at the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS), discusses her research on energy storage materials and the importance of multidisciplinary collaborations.

Full process of large SiC mirror manufacture, promising to promote the next generation of engineering optics.