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 a poster session. OSL also had a stand at the conference’s exhibition where it was great to have opportunity to catch-up with friends and clients old and new.
The Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy VIII conference saw a strong focus on cloud hosted systems and web-based GUIs and a move by many toward standards between institutions in hopes of more open sharing in the astronomical community. OSL’s Alastair Borrowman was a member of this conference’s organising committee and enjoyed working with the other committee members to ensure the interesting and varied program was delivered for the enjoyment of all.
Talks explored the potential of neural networks for telescope pointing, but some attendees remained unconvinced of their advantage over traditional pointing models. Other novel uses of machine learning were presented, an interesting example was for log analysis, a “Chat-GPT” like model for logs, predicting potential future entries based on past data, and a state machine-based log analysis system for identifying error states.
Security was a focus too, with members highlighting the importance of policies and procedures for handling security issues and managing vulnerabilities via checking what software is in use and any vulnerabilities that it may have.
Beyond the technical aspects, SPIE was a valuable opportunity to connect and discuss topics with fellow professionals and hear how our daily work impacts astronomy. The conference also addressed social issues in astronomy, with a focus on improving sustainability and inclusivity as well as how we can make a change in the wider community.