It’s time. The 2024 SPIE (Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers) is holding its even-year telescope conference (this time, Yokohama, Japan):
spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/astronomical-telescopes-and-instrumentation
Did I say IAU GA was big? SPIE is bigger. The IAU is topical, covering astronomy. SPIE as a whole is physics, covering medical, industrial, telecom, and e. g., sports and consumer optics as well as astronomy. The astronomy bits get broken out into their own conference and it’s still a giant, multi-track whirlwind:
The conference is so big, it’s broken into sub-conferences. One of them is themed around observatory operations alone:
spie.org/AS24/conferencedetails/observatory-operations
I’m trying to parse the mind-boggling cyclone here. More to come, much more… much, much more.