The Optics Laboratory is a class 8 clean room of 160 m2 in which both temperature and humidity are controlled. These conditions are necessary to guarantee the activities that are carried out and to enable the perfect conservation of components and instruments. The laboratory is equipped with specific instrumentation and a wide variety of general purpose components such as lenses, optical systems, lasers, optical and infrared detectors, filters, light sources, etc. Among its main equipment we can highlight the alignment telescope, interferometers, spectroradiometer, spectrophotometer and wavefront sensors. The laboratory is divided into 4 rooms plus a lobby at the entrance: Room A has four optical benches on the same 10-meter long vibration insulated foundation. This room is dedicated to different setups to carry out the verification of subsystems. Room B is of class 6 and inside it there is a bench of class 5. It is the place of greater index of cleanliness of the whole laboratory and is reserved for the assembly of space instrumentation and of detectors. Room C is mainly devoted to optical fibre bundle verification setups. In it is also the spectrophotometer. Room D houses the equipment and the setups for the realization of spectroradiometric and interferometric measurements The equipment of the Optics laboratory has been partially financed by ERDF funds.
The Optical Coating Laboratory is used for depositing thin films onto optical surfaces
The Fibre Optics Laboratory is used for the construction of optical fibre bundles for astronomical instrumentation.
The IAC Technology Division has the capacity for developing complete optical elements and systems from the design stages to manufacturing follow-up, integration and final verification.
