Iridian Spectral Technologies’ (Ottawa, ON, Canada) customized optical filters will be a key optical component in the Dragonfly Telescope being developed by the Dunlap Institute at the University of Toronto (Toronto, ON, Canada), which recently secured nearly $2 million in support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI; also in Ottawa). Iridian will design and manufacture custom narrowband filters to enable detection of specific low-brightness intergalactic gas lines that may hold clues to the universe’s yet-to-be-seen dark matter.
The company will work with Roberto Abraham at the University of Toronto, Pieter Van Dokkum at Yale University (New Haven, CT), and their teams on this new approach to astronomy and to the advances in astrophysics that the Dragonfly Telescope may enable.