The client

The US National Solar Observatory is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astrononomy, Inc. (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The Advanced Solar Telescope (ATST) represents a collaboration of 22 institutions, reflecting a broad segment of the solar physics community in the United States.

Background

With its unprecedented 4m aperture, integrated adaptive optics, low scatterd light, infrared coverage, and state-of-the-art post focus instrumentation, the ATST will be the largest and most capable solar telescope in the world.

What we are doing

An Observatory Sciences / Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory team is designing the telescope control system. The work covers both the control and pointing of the main telescope plus the coordination of all the telescope subsystems.

A partnership approach

We are working in a joint team with Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on this project.

A ‘first’ for Observatory Sciences / Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
The order for this work, awarded to our joint team, was the first ATST project contract to be awarded outside the United States.