Development of optical/infrared astronomical instrumentation in Taiwan

Shiang-Yu Wang^1*

¹Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

* Presenter:Shiang-Yu Wang, email:sywang@asiaa.sinica.edu.tw

Advanced astronomical instrumentation is essential to forefront astronomical research. Due to the uniqueness of individual telescopes, new ideas of different observations, and development of new technologies, commercial instruments are not available and most major astronomical research institutes devote substantial resources in instrumentation to fully exploit the capability of each telescope and enhance the sensitivity and efficiency of observations for ambitious science goals.
From the early stage of ASIAA, developing instrumentation capabilities is one of its major directions. Unlike lab instruments, astronomical instruments are typically installed under harsh environment and require high stability. Through international collaborations, we gained the experience and expertise in various kinds of instruments. A solid group has been established from zero in the past two decades. The success leads to our recent participation of the mid-IR instrument (METIS) for the European Extremely Large Telescope, the largest next generation optical telescope to be constructed.
In this talk, the experiences in developing modern astronomical optical instruments will be shared with both successful and failed cases. The challenges and future prospects of this particular research field will also be discussed.

Keywords: instrumentation, astronomy, optical, infrared