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SEA OtTeRS · Mechanical Engineer

Kantapong Tharawan, BEng

Mechanical engineer · Center for Optics and Photonics

Kantapong Tharawan
Curriculum vitae (PDF) ↗
Affiliation
National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (Public Organization)
Role in team
Mechanical engineer · LRS and CoLoRS mechanical components, DARTS truss
Since
2025

Kantapong Tharawan is a mechanical engineer at NARIT's Center for Optics and Photonics (since 2025). He designed the guiding-camera mount and the detector cooling for the LRS, the CoLoRS adaptor for the PlaneWave CDK700 with its counterweight and computer structure, alignment equipment for the 2.4-m Thai National Telescope, and the truss for the DARTS spectrograph, and he supports the K-mirror alignment. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Chiang Mai University in 2024.

He is first author of the SPIE 2026 paper on the upgraded mechanical components for the LRS and CoLoRS.

Optomechanical designfinite-element analysis (ANSYS)SolidWorksdetector cooling and mountstelescope interfaces

Projects

LRS mounted on the 2.4-m TNT with its cooling system
LRS

Low-Resolution Spectrograph for the 2.4-m Thai National Telescope

Interchangeable long-slit spectrograph for the 2.4-m TNT with on-the-fly slit change, a high-resolution VPH grating, and an off-axis pick-off mirror for guiding.

InstrumentIn development
CoLoRS on the 0.7-m Thai Robotic Telescope at NARIT AstroPark
CoLoRS

Compact Low-Resolution Spectrograph for the 0.7-m Thai Robotic Telescopes

Single long-slit spectrograph with dichroic-split iz-band guiding for fully robotic transient classification and AGN reverberation monitoring on the 0.7-m TRT.

InstrumentActive