Outline of the school

This Winter School of the Canary Islands in 2025 aims to provide an Introduction to several key  optical technologies with an enormous potential to push the frontiers of Astronomy. Each lecturer will deliver several talks addressing recent advances and innovations in one of the following fields: Integrated photonics, Wavefront Sensing, Precision Optics Fabrication and Metrology,  Freeform Optics, Machine Learning Tools. Space optical systems and optical communications. In the coming years extensive application of these  advanced optical technologies will be essential to solve fundamental problems in Astronomy using both ground-based and space observatories. Among this research challenges we may mention the high-contrast imaging needed to measure the properties of terrestrial planets or the wide field AO corrections needed  to understand the generation of solar magnetic fields. Attendees will be guided in  close interaction with lecturers and associate lecturers to solve some mini-practical exercises on several of these topics.

Lectures 

  • Photonics in Astronomy. Pradip Gatkine (California Univ.)
  • Wavefront sensing. Maud Langlois (CNRS)
  • Precision Fabrication. Wolfgang Osten (Stuttgart Univ.)
  • Freeform Optics.  Jannick Rolland (Rochester Univ.)
  • Machine learning tools. Andrés Asensio (IAC)
  • Optical systems for space. Pete Worden (Breakthrough Found.)
  • Quantum Optical technologies and space  J. Piris (ESA)

Hands on practical problems for students

by Auxi Padrón, Alonso Yñigo, Luis F Rodríguez,  Ana Fragoso, Iciar Montilla (design optical components and telescope sub-systems: mirrors, AO systems: wavefront sensors, photonic lanterns, ML algorithms, optical communications)

 

The Winter School will take place in San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain) from Monday, 17 November to Friday, 21 November 2025 The lectures (in English) will take place during the working days and will all be 45-mins long + 15-mins of discussion. The majority of them will take place during the morning and the early afternoon.  Links to the material used by the lecturers, as well as videos of the lectures, will be made available on the website of the school. Visits to the Teide Observatory in Tenerife will be scheduled as part of the activities on Wednesday, 19 November. A visit to the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma will be offered optionally on Saturday, 22 November.

Those interested in attending the school should apply following the instructions provided in the application page by Friday, 13 June 2025. Selected candidates will be informed by late June / early July  2025.