Course Syllabus


Optics course syllabus:

This outline of the course may be subject to change. The final program will be published in April 2012

  1. Images and conjugates, ray traces, focal lengths, f/s, invariants
  2. Mirrors, spherical mirrors, aberrations, conic mirrors
  3. Telescopes
  4. Lenses, Snell's law, thin lens, thick lens, aberrations (incl. chromatic)
  5. Compound lenses, achromats, apochromats
  6. Cameras: direct imagers, focal reducers, re-imagers; Infrared cameras: IR materials, cold stops and cryogenics, reflective systems
  7. Cameras (cont.); Spectrographs
  8. Spectrographs (cont.)
  9. How to design an astronomical camera
  10. How to design an astronomical spectrograph

Mechanics course syllabus:

This outline of the course may be subject to change. The final program will be published in April 2012

1.Introduction
    1.1.Telescopes and astronomical instrumentation: the role of mechanics
    1.2.Telescopes typologies
    1.3.Functional elements of a large telescope
    1.4.General concepts of astronomical instruments
    1.5.Optical vs infrared instrumentation
    1.6.Ground-based vs space telescopes and instrumentation
2.Basic principles of mechanics. Optical elements
    2.1.Structural mechanics
    2.2.Methods of attachment
    2.3.Mechanical drawings, software CAD-CAM
    2.4.Standards and tolerances
    2.5.Materials for mechanical elements
    2.6.Materials for astronomical mirrors
    2.7.Optical cements
    2.8.Optical Elements
    2.9.Segmented mirrors
    2.10.Birefringence
3.Opto-mechanical design strategies
    3.1.Approaches to deflection control
    3.2.Kinematic design
    3.3.Athermal design
    3.4.Vibrations on optical systems
    3.5.Adjustments
    3.6.Finite element methods. Software
4.Practical design examples
    4.1.Design steps
    4.2.Camera with sub-cell mounting
    4.3.Design of mounts for filters and windows
    4.4.Mirror mount analysis and design
    4.5.Spectral elements mount analysis and design
5.Optical infrared systems
    5.1.Infrared detectors
    5.2.Astronomical instruments in the IR
    5.3.Important parameters
6.Cryogenics and vacuum
    6.1.Basic principles of thermal design
    6.2.Cryogenics
    6.3.Vacuum
7.Opto-mechanics in cryogenic environment
    7.1.Optical materials for the IR
    7.2.Mounting lenses in cryogenical environments
    7.3.Mirrors and gratings
    7.4.Cryogenic mechanisms
8.Real systems descriptive examples
    8.1.Ground-based infrared instruments
    8.2.Space instruments

Electronics course syllabus:
This outline of the course may be subject to change. The final program will be published in April 2012

PART I:
Introduction and Overview
Basics
Electronics Laboratory Equipment
Software Tools: Control, Design, Simulation, Manufacturing, GUIs.

PART II:
Electronics in Astrophysics Instrumentation: from science to engineering & from engineering to Telescope
Requirements
Functional Blocks: physical and functional Subsystems
Instrument Types and particular questions
Data Acquisition Systems
Mechanisms Control Systems
Housekeeping Monitors and others
Hardware Standards.

PART III:
Astronomical Detectors
Visible CCDs & CMOS
EMCCDs
Infrared: from SWIR to LWIR
Cameras and Controllers: Commercial, Custom, ASICs, Interfaces and Data Comm. Protocols
Testing detectors: Facilities and Figures of Merit.

PART IV:
A real instrument for a 10-mt telescope: OSIRIS. Control Electronics System. Design, Evolution and results at GTC.

PART V:
Guidelines to design (and manufacture, assembly, verify, integrate and test) the Control Electronics System of simple astronomical instrument
Guidelines for the practical work.


Software course syllabus:

This outline of the course may be subject to change. The final program will be published in April 2012

PART I: Overview of the course
Understanding the problem
Outline of the course

PART II: Software development
Causes of development problems
Software best practices
The Rational Unified Process: Overview
The RUP: Process Description
The RUP: Dynamic Structure

PART III: Object Oriented Programming
Introduction to Objects
C++ Tutorial (I): Basics
C++ Tutorial (II): Functions and related topics
C++ Tutorial (III): Arrays and Pointers
C++ Tutorial (IV): Classes

PART IV: Essential programming tools
Using Makefiles
Debugging the code with GDB
Documenting the code with Doxygen
Control version with Subversion

PART V: The Unified Modeling Language
Introduction of UML
Practicing UML with Umbrello

PART VI: Data reduction pipelines
Objective of data reduction pipelines
Error handling
The GTC Data Processing Kit

PART VII: The practical Work
Description of the project

Management course syllabus:
This outline of the course may be subject to change. The final program will be published in April 2012