Date	Speaker	Topic
06.01.2017	--	Christmas break
13.01.2017	Philipp Dietrich (KIT)	Printed Micro-Optics and More 3D-micro-printing based on two-photon-absorption allows to manufacture free-form-structures of an arbitrary shape. The particular of this method is the creation of the desired structure at the very location of its later application. A subsequent positioning is not required, i.e. a perfect alignment is possible. Only in this way, 200nm silicon waveguides can be linked via 3d-printed free-form-waveguides („photonic-wirebonds“), which solves fundamental problems of integrated optics. Other options result from the capability to print free-form-lenses onto facets of optical components -like optical fibers-, whereby light is coupled much more efficiently into such fibers. But applications are not restricted to optics alone: Even the needle of a scanning-force-microscope is printable, such that each probe gets its optimal scanning head. Philipp Dietrich's talk will focus on optical devices, but will also highlight possible applications for astronomy. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
20.01.2017
27.01.2017	Mathias Voss	Presentation of Construction Projects at MPIA (All-Institute-Meeting) Invitation and abstract will be distributed by the speaker himself.
03.02.2017	Domenico Bonaccini Calia (ESO)	Laser Guide Star Systems: ESO LGS Facilities and Technology R&D In this talk Domenico Bonaccini Calia will review the current LGS facilities on UT4 and present the resuts of the commissioning at the VLT of the Four Laser Guide Star Facility, which is part of the new Adaptive Optics Facility on the UT4 telescope of the VLT at Cerro Paranal. The main experimental results will be presented and compared with the requirements. In addition, a report on the activities in the area of the LGS systems R&D will be given. These are being done in collaboration with the AO community in the ESO member states, where currently two of in total four tasks have been completed. Domenico Bonaccini Calia will also report on the systematic measurement of the LGS return fluxes and on the LGS-AO loop results obtained with largely elongated LGS, similar to those foreseen for the EELT configuration. An outlook on the future, approved R&D will also be given. Presentation: English Slides: English Questions: German, English
10.02.2017	Dr. Felipe Guzmán (DLR)	Laser measurement science in gravitational physics Coherent light enables length measurements of exquisite sensitivity that lie at the core of fascinating observations in fundamental and quantum physics, astrophysics, geodesy and measurement science. In particular, observations from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) over the past year not only confirmed crucial gravitational physics effects, but have now also officially launched the era of Gravitational Wave Astronomy and Multi-Messenger observations. Similar laser-interferometric measurements have been demonstrated and are now flying on LISA Pathfinder, exceeding expectations and paving the way for a spaceborne Gravitational Wave Observatory that will allow us to survey the gravitational universe otherwise inaccessible to us from ground. Moreover, GRACE follow-on will continue to provide valuable information about fluctuations of the Earth’s gravitational field to the geophysical and climatology science community starting early 2018, whose observations will be greatly enhanced by interspacecraft laser gradiometric measurements. In the area of cavity optomechanics and novel compact and integrated photonics, the combination of low-loss devices and optomechanically coupled coherent light fields enables us to reach unprecedented measurement accuracies near the quantum sensing limit, which are of relevance in applications such as Atom Interferometers, Gravimeters, and particularly broadband inertial sensing. I will discuss the advances and implementation aspects of spaceborne laser measurements for gravitational physics and novel optomechanical inertial sensing technologies that have been the focus of my research over the last few years. Presentation: English Slides: English Questions: German, English
17.02.2017
24.02.2017
03.03.2017
10.03.2017 (from 11hrs on, Lab 034)	Martin Kuerster	Demo of the New 100-Star Model Our model of the stars in the solar neighborhood, first shown at the last open house day, is now shining in a new light. In the meantime it has been reconditioned, improved, and complemented. Among its new features is a control electronics system that makes it possible to address selected stars or groups of stars thereby providing new possibilities for the illustration of astronomical contexts. Integrated coordinate planes help with the orientation. Our model allows observers to study fundamental astronomical questions: Which is the most abundant type of stars? Why can we not find most of the stars that we know from the night sky among the over 100 nearest stars in our neighborhood? Why are there no giant stars among them, but their descendants, the white dwarfs? Logistics: For the demo of the model we will meet at its location in Lab 034 (basement). We need to form groups of 20 people for this each of which will get together for 20 minutes: Group 1: 11.00 - 11.20 a.m. - Language: German Group 2: 11.25 - 11.45 a.m. - Language: English Group 3: 11.50 - 12.10 a.m. - Language: German Group 4: 12.15 - 12.35 a.m. - Language: Englisch Choose a time, but be warned that we may have to ask you to wait when we have already reached a group size of 20 people. Talk: German, English alternating Slides: n/a Questions: German, English
17.03.2017 (11hrs, MPIA)	Wilma Trick	The Secret Life of the Galaxies During dark nights the Milky Way is observable as a wide band of stars and dust in the sky. The Milky Way is our home galaxy hosting also our solar system, but is only one of one hundred billion galaxies in the whole universe. There are spiral galaxies, huge elliptic galaxies, cloud-like dwarf galaxies, and galaxies dancing around each other before they finally merge into one. Where do all these galaxies come from? And why do they look as they look? In the past decades astro physicists have act as space detectives and have collected evidence for a better understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. One of the prime witnesses: The motion of stars. This led for instance to the discovery of super massive black holes and the mysterious dark matter of which we actually know only very little, apart from its omnipresent existence and its necessity for the formation of galaxies. Presentation: German Slides: German Questions: German, English
24.03.2017 (11hrs, MPIA)	Robert Harris (ZAH, LSW)	Photonic Reformatting As astronomical telescopes grow in size the instruments behind them also grow. As the individual components become bigger, they become more difficult to manufacture, increasing the cost and making them more fragile (meaning unless you’ve got a particularly careful PhD student the cost of having spares also goes up). This has lead to many instruments using techniques such as image slicing to reduce the size of individual components and make the point spread function from the telescope manageable. Astrophotonics is a field that aims to combat the problems of size, cost and complexity. The idea is to take devices and technologies developed for the field of photonics and make use of them in astronomy. In this talk Robert Harris will describe his past, current and future work in a subfield of astrophotonics, photonic reformatting. This is akin to image slicing, but occurs within the fibre, meaning the devices are fully integrated. He will discuss both theoretical and practical aspects of his work and draw conclusions as to where he feels the field will go next. Presentation: English Slides: English Questions: German, English
31.03.2017 (11hrs, MPIA)	Damien Gratadour (Observatoire de Paris)	Green Flash : Energy efficient real-time computing for ELTs Controlling sophisticated AO systems on the future ELTs is a challenge which is yet to be resolved. As the ELTs are adaptive telescopes, this is critical to all ELT instrumentation. Green Flash is an international EU funded joint industrial and academic project intended to study and exploit future and emerging computing technologies for ELT scale AO real-time control. This includes the hard real-time data pipeline, the soft real-time supervisor module as well as a real-time capable ELT-scale simulation to test and verify proposed solutions. To date, we have initiated in-depth studies on GPUs, MICs and FPGAs. Moreover, beyond computing capabilities, it is critical for these future AO RTC to address the data flow challenges both in terms of the large rate of streaming data from sensors and in terms of heterogeneous data streams in the system. A strong emphasis is thus made in the project around interconnect strategies using dedicated hardware, middleware and software. With this R&D program we aim at feeding the E-ELT AO systems preliminary design studies, led by the selected first-light instruments consortia, with technological validations supporting the designs of their RTC modules. The culmination of the project will be an on-sky demonstration of a chosen solution. However, all proposed solutions will include a detailed study of capabilities and scalability. Here we review the project goals and the results from the studies at the mid-point of this three year endeavor and we describe the downselection process that will lead to the design of a full featured prototype to be eventually implemented in the lab and tested with the real-time simulator. Presentation: English Slides: English Questions: German, English
07.04.2017
14.04.2017	--	Good Friday
21.04.2017	--	Easter Break
28.04.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Thomas Bertram	A bit closer to the stars: LINC-NIRVANA on the way to "first light" Eleven months after the arrival on Mt. Graham, LINC-NIRVANA finally found his designated position on the LBT. In a total of nine trips and 630 person days the instrument has been re-assembled, internally aligned and in September 2016 finally installed at the telescope. In subsequent trips, LN and LBT have been aligned with respect to each other and a set of "on sky" tests were successfully passed. Highlight of the last weeks was the first "closed loop" with one of the two groundlayer wavefront sensor using a total of five guide stars. This presentation gives an overview of the activities in the past 18 months, talks about the challenges, the team had to cope with, the conditions at LBT and about the achieved results. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
05.05.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Carolin Liefke	Remote Observing with HdA/MPIa's 50cm Telescope Since October 2009, the western dome of the Elsaesser lab hosts a modern semi-professional 50cm telescope. Although equipped with high-level instrumentation, it is currently used very rarely. This should change with the opportunity to operate it completely remote via the internet. This presentation shows the general requirements and operating principles of a remote telescope, demonstrates the current status of the modifications to the 50cm telescope and its dome, and gives an overview of future opportunities to use it. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
12.05.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Thomas Mueller	Visualization in Astronomy The aim of scientific visualization in general and visualization in astronomy in particular is to graphically illustrate scientific data to enable scientists to better understand and explore their data in detail, as well as to help presenting their work to the general public. Astronomical data coming from observations and numerical simulations cover a large range of different data types, dimensionality, and complexity, and thus pose new challenges to visualization techniques and algorithms, in particular if the visualization is to be nearly interactive. After a brief introduction to different kinds of data sets and how they can be visualized, Thomas Mueller will present several visualization projects with scientists from MPIA. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
19.05.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Tobias Bretschi (AIRBUS APWORKS GmbH)	Metal 3D Printing In the upcoming AstroTechTalk, the central topic will be additive manufacturing of metal materials (metal 3D printing). AIRBUS APWORKS, a 100% subsidiary of Airbus Defence & Space from Munich will present their competencies in this field of manufacturing and will explain the advantages and disadvantages of the SLM process (Selective Laser Melting) with the help of numerous parts - mainly from Aerospace projects. Additionally, typical metal materials for 3D printing will be presented, including the high strength aluminum alloy Scalmalloy®, which was specifically developed for additive manufacturing and which shows excellent properties for Aerospace applications (high yield strength, low CTE, …). Information about the presenter: * Born in Heidelberg * Aerospace Engineering Studies at the University of Stuttgart and at Virginia Tech, USA * Dissertation at Airbus Group Innovations, the research centre of Airbus (supervised by TU Darmstadt) * Focal Point for all Aerospace customers at AIRBUS APWORKS Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
26.05.2017	--	Bridging day after Ascension Day
02.06.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Justus Zorn (MPIK)	CHEC-M - A Camera Prototype for the small-size Telescopes of the Cherenkov-Telesope-Array (CTA) The Gamma-ray Cherenkov Telescope (GCT) is proposed for the Small-Sized Telescope component of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). GCT’s dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) optical system allows the use of a compact camera with small form-factor photosensors. The GCT camera is ∼ 0.4 m in diameter and has 2048 pixels; each pixel has a ∼ 0.2 degree angular size, resulting in a wide field-of-view. The design of the GCT camera is high performance at low cost, with the camera housing 32 front-end electronics modules providing full waveform information for all of the camera’s 2048 pixels. The first GCT camera prototype, CHEC-M, was commissioned during 2015, culminating in the first Cherenkov images recorded by a SC telescope and the first light of a CTA prototype. In this talk, Justus Zorn will present results from CHEC-M from both lab measurements and on-telescope operations. Furthermore, he will discuss first results from CHEC-S, the second GCT-prototype based on a silicon photomultiplier. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
09.06.2017	--	Pentecost holidays
16.06.2017	--	Pentecost holidays
23.06.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Luis Hoffman (Nerf, Imec)	Silicon multi electrode-optrode arrays (MEOA) for optogenetics Optogenetics allows precise spatiotemporal control of neurons using light which has opened new possibilities in the study of neuronal circuits in the brain. A successful application of optogenetics requires devices that deliver light into the brain. These devices should be lightweight, small and free of complicated tethers. Additionally, such devices should incorporate many light outputs and recording electrodes with a very high resolution to allow for the manipulation of individual neurons and increase the degrees of freedom for neuroscientific experimental design. This work presents a collection of novel electrode-optrode arrays for in vitro and in vivo optogenetic applications. These devices integrate silicon nitride waveguide technology with titanium nitride electrodes to channel light into the optrode array site and record the electrical response of the neurons. The light from external sources (laser diodes or optical fibers) is coupled into these waveguides and subsequently out-coupled orthogonally at the array site by means of optical grating couplers. The in vivo optical neural probe (optoprobe) incorporates 12 miniaturized optical outputs (optrodes) for light of 450 nm and 590 nm with an effective size of 6 × 10 µm2. They are interlaced along 24 recording electrodes of 10 × 10 µm2 on a 100 µm wide and 30 µm thick shank. The in vitro MEOA consists of an array of 8 by 8 optrodes – identical to the in vivo device – interlaced with an array of 8 by 8 electrodes of 60 µm diameter. Both have a pitch of 100 µm. The systems were capable of local artifact-free excitation and recording of channelrhodopsin 2 transduced neurons. Presentation: English Slides: English Questions: English
30.06.2017
07.07.2017	--	No room available
14.07.2017	--	MPIA summer festival
21.07.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Roman Follert (TLS Tautenburg)	Resurrection of the beast - Impressions of the CRIRES+ MAIT phase and a project update High-resolution infrared (IR) spectroscopy plays an important role in astrophysics from the search for exoplanets to cosmology. The majority of existing IR spectrographs were and are limited by their small simultaneous wavelength coverage. The adaptive optics (AO) assisted CRIRES instrument, previously installed at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), was an IR (0.92 - 5.2 μm) high-resolution spectrograph which was in operation since 2006. CRIRES was a unique instrument, accessing a parameter space (wavelength range and spectral resolution), which up to now was largely uncharted, as described in Käufl et al. (2004). However, the setup was limited to a narrow, single-shot, spectral range of about 1/70 of the central wavelength, resulting in low observing efficiency for many modern scientific programmes requiring a broad spectral coverage. By introducing crossdispersing elements and larger detectors, the simultaneous wavelength range can be increased by a factor of ten with respect to the old configuration, while the total operational wavelength range can be preserved: CRIRES+ has passed its Final Design Review in April 2016. Since then, installation of the instrument has come a long way. Roman Follert will present the most recent status of the instrument, give an overview of the design and how it has been realized by now. He will also summarize the test results (mostly subsystem) obtained so far. Last but not least, an update on the project schedule will be given. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English