The phenomenal and Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and its Instruments - taking astronomy into the 2030's ~ Mick Johnson

Mick will describe highly ambitious Extremely Large Telescope, currently being built in Europe. It will be installed at the ESO observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile at an altitude of 3,000 metres. The telescope will be the world's largest optical/infra-red telescope and will come into operation towards the end of this decade. It will have a 39.3-metre-diameter segmented primary mirror, and incorporates advanced technology such as laser tomographic adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric distortion and provide astounding image quality and sensitivity. There is also a suite of sophisticated instruments under construction to take advantage of the telescope capabilities. Mick will introduce the HARMONI instrument, which is is one of the 'first-light' instruments. HARMONI is led by University of Oxford with the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK-ATC), Durham University and a pan-European team.

Mick worked as an instrument engineer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Herstmonceux during the period when the William Herschel Telescope was being built (the WHT was the biggest telescope in the northern hemisphere at the time, with a 4.2m diameter primary, the same size as the ELT secondary!). He led the overall instrument upgrade programme, which included the first automated fibre-fed spectrometer on the WHT. Following the closure of the RGO in 1998, Mick worked on space instruments and missions for astronomy and Earth observation at Matra Marconi Space (renamed Astrium, then Airbus Space) until his retirement in 2021. Since 2016, Mick has been a member of the UK ELT Steering Committee and Chair of its Instrument Oversight Committee (EIOC).