Largest reflector telescope in China uses custom eddy current sensors

Precision sensor specialist Micro-Epsilon has supplied 600 eddy current sensors to the Chinese Academy of Science for use on the LAMOST (Large sky Area Multi-Object fibre Spectroscopic Telescope), the largest reflector telescope in China.

The custom-developed eddy current sensors have a measuring range of 2mm and provide extremely high resolution of just 1nm (nanometre). The sensors also offer long-term stability of better than 20nm over 3-4 hours (a typical operating cycle for the telescope). The function of the sensors is to compensate for any slight movement of the lenses used by the telescope.

LAMOST is located in the Chinese observatory at Yinglong Station near Peking. The telescope is a new type of segmented reflector telescope for the spectroscopic surveying of space. The project is part of the ESO (European Southern Observatory), a European organisation that builds and operates a suite of the world’s most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes.