Astrophotonics is the application of photonics to astronomical instrumentation. It is a rapidly developing field that takes a new approach to instrumentation, in which the bulk optics of traditional instruments, such as lenses, mirrors, and diffraction gratings, are replaced with devices embedded within waveguides. This enables instruments that are smaller, modular, more stable, and most excitingly, with optical capabilities not possible with traditional instruments.Astrophotonics has reached a stage of development where many prototype devices are now being tested on sky, and the first fully-fledged instruments incorporating photonic devices are now being used for observations. The field is thus transitioning from one of instrumental research and development to mainstream observational astrophysics.This is the first book focussed on astrophotonics, written by three experts in the field. Beginning with a sound introduction to the basic principles of astrophotonics, it is intended to communicate the current status, potential, and future possibilities of astrophotonics to the wider astronomical, optics and photonics communities.

Astrophotonics is the application of photonics to astronomical instrumentation. It is a rapidly developing field that takes a new approach to instrumentation, in which the bulk optics of traditional instruments, such as lenses, mirrors, and diffraction gratings, are replaced with devices embedded within waveguides. This enables instruments that are smaller, modular, more stable, and most excitingly, with optical capabilities not possible with traditional instruments.Astrophotonics has reached a stage of development where many prototype devices are now being tested on sky, and the first fully-fledged instruments incorporating photonic devices are now being used for observations. The field is thus transitioning from one of instrumental research and development to mainstream observational astrophysics.This is the first book focussed on astrophotonics, written by three experts in the field. Beginning with a sound introduction to the basic principles of astrophotonics, it is intended to communicate the current status, potential, and future possibilities of astrophotonics to the wider astronomical, optics and photonics communities.

This volume contains the updated and expanded lecture notes of the 37th Saas-Fee Advanced Course organised by the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy. It offers the most comprehensive and up to date review of one of the hottest research topics in astrophysics - how our Milky Way galaxy formed. Joss Bland-Hawthorn & Ken Freeman lectured on Near Field Cosmology - The Origin of the Galaxy and the Local Group. Francesca Matteucci's chapter is on Chemical evolution of the Milky Way and its Satellites. As designed by the SSAA, books in this series - and this one too - are targeted at graduate and PhD students and young researchers in astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. Lecturers and researchers entering the field will also benefit from the book.