The Instrumentation Division of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is involved since several years in upgrading its capacities to design and manufacture optical components. To this end, we have created a new laboratory (Centre for Advanced Optical Systems, CSOA) which will be capable to design, fabricate and qualify large optical

In recent years, the topic of existence and exploration of exocomets has been gaining increasing attention. The asymmetrical decrease in the star's brightness due to the passage of a comet-like object in front of the star was successfully predicted. It was subsequently confirmed on the basis of the light curves of stars observed by Kepler and TESS

The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) is an international initiative to build a 4-metre robotic telescope. With a primary mirror consisting of 18 segmented hexagonal mirrors and a control system that will allow fully autonomous operation, NRT will be the world's largest robotic telescope. This, together with a response time of less than 30 seconds, a

The 4m class New Robotic Telescope (NRT) is an optical facility designed to revolutionize the rapid follow-up and classification of variable and transient objects. The project is at the stage where key systems are progressing through their detailed design phases, which presents a major engineering challenge for all project partners to manage design

Current polarimetric calibration techniques derive the instrument modulation matrix by numerically fitting an instrumental model to measurements of a set of calibration Stokes vectors. These techniques are typically limited to an error on the retrieved normalized Stokes Q, U and V parameters, in the $1\times10^{-2}$ to $1\times10^{-3}$ range. This

The Near-Earth Object Mission in the Infra-Red (NEOMIR) is the first ESA's space-based mission fully dedicated to discovering near-Earth objects (NEOs), with a focus to detect and raise early warning for the smaller objects that are coming from the Sun direction, thus nearly impossible to be detected by ground-based optical survey. NEOMIR is