Tiny glass chip links two telescopes to see the sky in sharper detail
A glass chip no bigger than a couple of centimetres has linked two telescopes in California so they work together as a single, far more powerful instrument. The test, reported on 30 October, is the first time the tiny device has been used to combine starlight under real observing conditions.
The chip was developed at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. It sits at the heart of an instrument called CHARIOT at the CHARA Array on Mount Wilson in California, one of the world’s leading facilities for high-resolution astronomy. The array has six one-metre telescopes that can be linked together, but combining their light with extreme precision has until now needed large, complex systems of mirrors and lenses.
Instead, the new chip guides light through tiny channels written inside the glass with an ultrafast laser, in much the same way an integrated circuit guides electrons. During observing campaigns in 2024 and 2025, it combined light from two of the array’s telescopes and recorded signals from a range of stars, including stars fainter than the system it replaced could reach.
Professor Robert Thomson, who led the chip’s development with Dr Aurélien Benoît, said: “This is a significant milestone for a research program that began more than 15 years ago.”
Why it matters
Linking telescopes lets astronomers see far finer detail than any single telescope can manage. In effect, the telescopes act as one much larger one. A chip-based approach could make that kind of instrument smaller, more stable and easier to upgrade, and different chips can be swapped in and out within hours for testing. The team says the technology could eventually help astronomers study how planetary systems form, and directly detect and describe planets around other stars.
What happens next
The results were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, with Dr Aline Dinkelaker of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam as lead author. The international team, from Heriot-Watt, the universities of Cologne and Potsdam in Germany, and Georgia State University’s CHARA Array, will keep developing the approach, aiming to link more telescopes and take on the demanding observations needed to study distant planetary systems.
This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.
Sources
- https://phys.org/news/2026-10-tiny-photonic-chip-links-telescopes.html (Phys.org, 30 October 2026)
- https://www.nanowerk.com/news2/space/newsid=70516.php (Nanowerk, 30 October 2026)
- https://www.hw.ac.uk/news/2026/tiny-photonic-chip-links-telescopes-together-to-view-the-universe-in-astonishing-details (Heriot-Watt University, 2026)
