Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
The importance and applied use of fibreoptics in astronomy has received rapidly growing attention in the past 5 years, particularly for instrumentation where the lightness, flexibility and simplicity of fibres, compared with classical optical systems, can be exploited to full advantage.
Angel and Angel et al, who seem to be the first to have used an optical fibre to link a telescope to an instrument, also made the first proposal for the construction of a VLT (FLOAT) consisting of 40 independent mirrors linked to a single instrument via optical fibres. Since that time many authors, including Connes, Serkowski et al, Hubbard et al, Heacox, Hill et al, Vanderriest, Courtes, Tubbs et al, Gray, Lund et al, Schiffer, Watson et al, Vanderriest et al, and Felenbock et al, have proposed or reported various applications involving fibres with astronomical instrumentation.