Renowned astrophysicist Rene A. Ong pays visit to the Joint Laboratory of Optics

Professor Rene A. Ong, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in research in the field of astro-particle physics and high-energy astrophysics, visited the Joint Laboratory of Optics. Professor Ong currently serves as a co-spokesman for the CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) consortium, in which the Joint Laboratory of Optics is also involved.

During his visit to the Joint Laboratory of Optics, he toured the optical laboratories and workshops and also inspected the prototype of the FAST telescope, which the Joint Laboratory of Optics is currently developing. In the following days, he plans to visit the Prague facilities of the Czech Academy of Sciences' Institute of Physics and the Astronomical Institute's Observatory in Ondřejov, where a pair of SST-1M telescope prototypes originally prepared for the CTA Observatory are installed.

The CTA consortium is currently constructing a new generation of high-energy gamma-ray observatories, consisting of two systems of optical telescopes of various sizes located in the northern (La Palma Island) and southern (Atacama Desert) hemispheres. It is expected that the CTA observatories will discover hundreds of new sources of high-energy gamma-ray radiation in the universe, which will improve our understanding of their functioning mechanisms, explore distant regions of the universe, and aid in the search for dark matter. The Joint Laboratory of Optics contributes to the construction of both observatories through several activities, including telescope pointing and synchronization, development of reflective surfaces, and telescope control system development.

M. Pech (left) and L. Chytka (right) s R. Ongem (middle) in front of teh FAST telescope container at JLO.