The strong commitment of the Observatory in scientific and technological projects, over the years, has led to the need to create laboratories, develop facilities and acquire instrumentation. In addition to theOPSys facility, the following laboratories are at moment available:
Clean room
The cleanroom, with ISO7 cleanliness level (class 10,000) is equipped with an optical bench with anti-vibration system, for AIT&V (Alignment, Integration, Test and Verification) activities on optical instrumentation. Inside the clean room there is also a laminar flow bench with cleanliness levels equivalent to an ISO5 (class 100) used for testing subsystems for space applications with very high cleanliness requirements. The clean room has several light sources in the visible light, calibration lamps, integrating sphere, a monochromator/spectrometer, different types of detectors and several optical, mechanical, electronic and polarimetric tools for testing/calibration activities. Nearby the clean room, in the same room, there is a “grey” or semi-clean area with two optical benches, for support activities to those carried out inside the clean room.
Optical Laboratory
Traditionally dedicated to interferometry, the “optical” laboratory is currently used for integration, calibration and test of instrumentation with non-stringent cleanliness requirements. The laboratory is equipped with different types of sources (including a black body), integrating sphere, microscopes, a small vacuum chamber for coating deposition, 2 optical benches, theodolite and opto-mechanical equipment.
Electronics Laboratory
Equipped with soldering stations, workbenches, function generators, power generators, oscilloscopes, multimeters, … It is currently widely used for integration/testing of electronics control systems.
Mechanical Workshop
The mechanical workshop allows the “in-house” production of mechanical parts. It is equipped with a lathe, milling machine, drill,… It is mainly used for the production of custom parts and for the creation of mechanical interfaces.
Facility for VUV and X-ray tests
The commissioning of the facility is currently in progress.
