WEAVE is the new wide-field spectroscopic facility for the prime focus of the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, Spain. Its fibre positioner is essential for the accurate placement of the spectrograph's ∼ 960-fibre multiplex. To maximise the assignment of its optical fibres, WEAVE uses a simulated annealing algorithm called Configure, 1 which

The New Robotic Telescope (NRT), the 4-metre, next-generation Liverpool Telescope (LT), will be located on La Palma, Canary Islands. The design and development of the world's largest robotic telescope, with a slew speed of approximately 10 degrees/second, poses challenges that have resulted in innovative design concepts, including the scheduling

Once the design phase of the Multi-Conjugated Adaptive Optics (MCAO) testbed for the European Solar Telescope (EST) is completed, the system has been assembled and integrated at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The aim of this highly configurable optical testbed is to study different solar adaptive optics solutions, including Single

The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a 4.2-m solar telescope, based on an aplanatic Gregorian configuration with an alt-azimuthal mount. This contribution presents the status of EST and describes the baseline for the preliminary design of the Telescope Structure (Telescope Mount), Enclosure and Pier. It also introduces the systems engineering

The European Solar Telescope (EST) aims to become the most ambitious ground-based solar telescope in Europe. Its roots lie in the knowledge and expertise gained from building and running previous infrastructures like, among others, the Vacuum Tower Telescope, Swedish Solar Telescope, or the GREGOR telescope. They are installed in the Canary Islands

Polarization is a fundamental property of the light and is very useful to measure the magnetic field vector of the various features that can be observed in the solar atmosphere. Ideally, a solar telescope should not introduce any polarization to the incoming light that could mask the one coming from the Sun. However, some instrumental polarization