Astronomical and Electronic Microwave Instrumentation

Line of research oriented to the study, modeling, design and development of instruments for astronomy and space physics. In the astronomical field, research is strongly oriented towards the development of new semiconductor devices in order to enhance the capabilities of modern telescopes.

Chile is becoming the capital of Astronomy in the world, due to its strategic advantage of being located in the southern hemisphere. In this way, it attracts more and more state-of-the-art astronomical facilities, a development that has been boosted by the construction of the ALMA observatory and further favored by the construction of the E-ELT and CCAT telescopes.

The aforementioned Research Line offers enormous opportunities to its students, since it allows them to be in contact with the large telescopes and radio telescopes in the north of our country, learn about new technologies and participate in cutting-edge technological development. As part of this effort, the Radio Astronomical Instrumentation Group (RAIG, for its centuries in English) has been established since 2008, with the participation of the Departments of Astronomy and Electrical Engineering of the Faculty. The 1.2m Survey Radio Telescope (SRT) was installed at the Department of Astronomy, University of Chile, which serves as a training instrument and test bed for new technology developed in our laboratories. As these laboratories have been installed the Millimeter Wave Laboratory (MWL), the Astro-Photonics Laboratory (APL), and the Space and Planetary Exploration Laboratory (SPEL, all for its acronym in English). The use of these devices in complete systems, such as astronomical receivers, makes the design and construction of systems an important vein of research. Modeling, signal processing, and hardware techniques used in astronomy, at frequencies ranging from microwaves to the optical range, are common to other areas, particularly space physics, as an instrumentation research for remote monitoring from the ground to space systems such as probes, rockets and satellites.