The exciting news comes from FESB (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Naval Architecture) of the University of Split: the Faculty’s scientists developed a telescope directionality system that aided the discovery of the most distant active galactic nucleus.

As part of his work at FESB, Ph.D. Darko Zarić, under the mentorship of Prof. Ph.D. Nikola Godinović, designed, tested, and developed a system that measures the movement of a camera 27 meters away from the reflector ten times per second with outstanding precision.

The system was then successfully installed on the Large-Sized Telescope 1 and fully met the design requirements.

The second system, for precise measurement and correction of the orientation of the telescope during observation, is developed by PhD student Toni Šarić, also at FESB. Both scientists are members of the Large-Sized Telescope (LST) collaboration.

The mentioned collaboration consists of more than 400 scientists and engineers from twelve different countries and 67 different institutions.

We would like to emphasize that a system for calibrating the drive motors for pointing the telescope and precisely measuring the telescope’s directionality was designed, tested, and developed right here at FESB in Split.

Proving that Split is also a city of astrophysics and astronomy, even though we don’t hear about that side of our city as often!

LST-1 telescope is located at the northern CTA Observatory (Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory) on the Canary Island of La Palma and is still in the commissioning phase. Although it is an initial phase, the use of LST-1 has already been essential for a major scientific discovery – that of the most distant active galactic nucleus.

We congratulate the FESB scientists and wish them continued success in collecting and analyzing data that will help understand processes in space!

Photos: FESB