Around 3000 delegates attended the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2026 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in July. Among them were Observatory Sciences engineers Elena Salmon, Tom Moynihan, Matthew MacIntosh, Kieran Mulholland and Alastair Borrowman. First-timers Elena, Tom and Matthew got to meet in person many folk they have collaborated with while working on ESO and …
In October 2025, three of OSL’s experienced EPICS engineers delivered a successful bespoke training course at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. Attended primarily by a group of radiation protection engineers, the course gave a three day introduction to EPICS which included a variety of topics from fundamentals such as …
This September 2025 Observatory Sciences was proud to be a gold sponsor of the 20th ICALEPCS (International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems) conference in Chicago. Five members of OSL attended: Alan Greer, Ulrik Pedersen, Emma Arandjelovic, Thomas Ives, and Bryn Roberts. The conference was held at the impressive Palmer House Hotel, with plenary …
The Spring 2025 EPICS Collaboration Meeting took place this April at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). Directors Alan Greer and Andy Foster attended, along with three members of the Observatory Sciences Ltd (OSL) Oxford office: Ulrik Pedersen, Phil Smith, and Bryn Roberts. OSL’s Oxford office is based at RAL and the meeting was attended by …
In March 2025, director Alan Greer together with six OSL engineers travelled to Eindhoven in the Netherlands to participate in the 26th PI (Program Increment) planning event for SKAO. This was an ‘all hands’ face-to-face event, which saw 256 people from teams all over the globe coming together to plan our work for the next …
As the SKA-Low project progresses and more sub-components are integrated, close collaboration with the integration and testing teams is crucial. In September, the MCCS team attended a planning conference in Perth, where they outlined their goals for the next three months. They also had the opportunity to visit the observatory in Wajarri Yamaji Country, Western …
SPIE’s Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation conference in Yokohama, Japan, brought together astronomers and engineers in June 2024 offering opportunity to share new and exciting technologies and techniques for the future of astronomy. Observatory Sciences’ engineers Alastair Borrowman, Benjamin Carpenter and Elliot Scott attended. Carpenter and Scott both had papers accepted and displayed their work in …
In June 2024, Observatory Sciences engineer Emma Arandjelovic travelled to Pune, India, to participate in the 23rd Program Increment (PI) planning event for the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO). There are currently ten countries involved in this collaboration to build the world’s largest radio telescope (with more in the pipeline!), so remote working technologies such …
OSL has recently updated the control software for the Hydra instrument on the WIYN Observatory’s 3.5m telescope. Hydra is a spectroscopic-fibre positioner that places up to 100 fibres across a 38cm focal plane to a design precision of 10 microns. The control software commands the robotic positioner to deploy these fibres on scientific targets whilst …
Laser technology will take a big step forward when the Extreme Photonics Applications Centre (EPAC), being built by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Central Laser Facility (CLF) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, comes on-stream in a few years’ time. EPAC will be a groundbreaking international facility that will apply laser-driven plasma accelerators to …