Astronomy
For more than 40 years, Thales has delivered high accuracy optics for ground-based Astronomy all around the world. These optics range from single, but challenging, unmounted optical components up to fully integrated opto-mechanical systems. Our design heritage and past experience in this field cover the design, manufacture and AIT activities of many optics and sub-assemblies used in Telescope instrumentation, such as focal plane assemblies as well as the direct production of telescope mirrors themselves. Several major achievements of Thales ground-based Astronomy products were the Optical wide field corrector for the Dark Energy Survey (lien), the Reference Body for future Deformable Secondary Mirror of the VLT (lien) and different challenging spectrograph optics (Collimator and Cameras) for different Observatories (lien). One advantage Thales has with this activity is that most part of the manufacturing steps involved (i.e. opto-mechanical design, milling/grinding, lightening, polishing and coating) are directly under our control in our own facility. Our current capabilities for the production of optics for ground-based Astronomy are from a few centimeters size up to 2 meters. Thanks to the continuous efforts in R& D and investments into new production machines, Thales is now ready for future industrial challenges including the optical production of some key elements of the E-ELT, GMT and TMT programs.
Read More
Reference Body for VLT-DSM
Thales has completed in 2010 the manufacturinge of this very challenging Zerodur lightened blank. This piece (called “VLT-DSM Reference body” or also « VLT-DSM Back Plate ») will be part of the future Deformable Secondary Mirror (DSM) of one of the four Very Large Telescopes (VLT) operated by ESO [...]
Read More
Optical corrector for Dark Energy Survey
Thales manufactured one of largest lens in the world the Dark Energy Survey (DES) project (lien) with a diameter of 980mm. This project included the grinding, polishing, control and coat and AR coatings of 5 large lenses (some evenaspheres) [...]
Read More
Osiris Collimator for Grantecan
Thales designed and manufactured the Collimator Assembly for the OSIRIS instrument delivered to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC-Tenerife). [...]
Read More
First light secondary mirror for LBT
Thales was awarded the contract for the optical polishing and control of the “first light” secondary mirror of the LBT (Φ980mm) The unit was produced and delivered to the LBT project though a contract placed by the Ohio State University. [...]
Read More
Secondary mirror for MRO
Thales has manufactured (i.e. grinding, polishing and coating) the secondary ULE mirror of the Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO). This is a challenging highly off axis convex aspherical mirror. [...]
Read More
Spectrograph optics for HRS-SALT
Thales has full capabilities to design, manufacture, assembly and test spectrograph optics such as dioptric Collimator and Camera assemblies. The Blue and Red CAM assemblies for the High Resolution Spectrograph of the South African Large Telescope was a. typical example of Thales know how in such business. [...]
Read More
PEPSI-cross dispersor
Under a contract issued by the AIP, Thales has manufactured a set of 6 Cross Dispersers (one for spectral band in-between 365nm-950nm) used in the PEPSI spectrograph installed at focal plane of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) [...]
Read More
WFCAM optics for UK-IR telescopeg
Under a contract issue by the UATC, Thales has designed and manufactured the Secondary and Tertiary mirrors as well as the large Filed lens of the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) installed onto the UK infrared Telescope (UK-IRT) located in Hawaii [...]
