APPLICATION STORIES

Swift optics take off
UV optical monitor success. The NASA Swift Explorer mission utilising our optics was successfully placed in orbit on 20th November 2004 from a Delta II launcher… Read more


Second generation of FEROS design
French-Canadian telescope project opts for Optical Surfaces to supply high precision optics… Read more


SAAO buys UK optics
South African observatory turns to the UK for high precision optics… Read more


Oxford/HIRDLS reference mirror
Visualising phenomena virtually unobservable by current satellite instruments… Read more


SALT telescope ADC
The South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) has chosen Optical Surfaces Ltd. to supply the two high precision prisms that make up the Atmospheric Dispersion Compensator (ADC) for the South African Large Telescope (SALT)… Read more


Advanced optics to benefit Earth Observation Satellite
Optical Surfaces Ltd. has supplied three high precision aspheric mirrors that form key elements at the heart of the advanced optical system to be used by the novel low-cost TopSat Earth Observation satellite… Read more


Development of a highly efficient compact x-ray laser…
Using a series of demanding high precision optics supplied by Optical Surfaces Ltd. the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) in Kyoto (Japan) have demonstrated the possibility of a compact pumping system for x-ray lasers in the shorter wavelength region… Read more


OSL channels photons from deep space
Selected for their expertise in manufacturing complex optics, Optical Surfaces Ltd. has been the key subcontractor to Photonis SAS (Brive, France) for profiling and polishing batches of high-precision microchannel plate blanks which have been used in a series of space research projects… Read more


OSL Optics monitors the oceans
Optical Surfaces Ltd. have provided the Space Science department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), Didcot, England, with three identical 110mm diameter Off-axis Paraboloids for use in three generations of their Along Track Scanning Radiometers (ATSR) … Read more


OSL Mirror monitors city pollution
Optical Surfaces Ltd. have collaborated with the Remote Sensing Group at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (D.E.R.A., Malvern, England) and the Civil Engineering Department of Salford University (Manchester, England) to develop high performance off-axis beam expanders for integration into a new generation of pulsed coherent LIDAR systems … Read more


New Star Found!
Optical Surfaces Ltd. has provided the ‘Hot Star Group’ led by Prof. Bernhard Wolf at the Landessternwarte Heidelberg (LSW) in Germany with a series of very high precision optics that have been used in the Fibre-fed Extended Range Optical Spectrograph (FEROS) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla, Chile … Read more


Optical Surfaces Chosen to Supply Gemini Telescope HROS optics
University College London, (Optical Science Laboratory) chose Optical Surfaces Ltd. to supply the main corrector lenses at the heart of the spectrograph to be installed in the Gemini 8 m telescope being built in Chile … Read more


Optical Surfaces’ components in XMM Optical Monitor
Faced with challenging time scales and demanding tolerances, Optical Surfaces Ltd has supplied a series of key precision optics to a consortium led by the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) to help them successfully deliver the XMM Optical Monitor telescope to the European Space Agency (ESA) on time … Read more


High Power laser optics
Optical Surfaces Ltd.has provided the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), Didcot, England, with a high precision, fast focussing On-axis Paraboloid of 255mm diameter for use in the short pulse beam of the ultra-high power Vulcan laser … Read more