Welcome!

Nathanaël Restori

Graduate engineer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Currently working as an Associate Scientist and Opto-mechanical Engineer at the Geneva Observatory, the astronomy department of the University of Geneva. The following domains interest me: the night sky (astronomy and astrophotography), human vision, optics and photography, mountaineering, … I also have a big interest for outreach.

Alioth des Flocons étincelants

Alioth des Flocons étincelants is my Shetland sheepdog (or Sheltie). He was born on the 22^nd of April 2025 at the Flocons étincelants kennel. His name comes from Epsilon Ursae Majoris, alias Alioth, the brightest star of the Great Bear constellation. He is a very joyful and sociable dog.

Astro-Tools

Astro-Tools is a website I developed. What originally started as a simple chart rendering software on my laptop eventually became a fully fledged website, with many features. Astro-Tools thrives to be a tool usable by both beginners and advanced users.

Sous le Ciel de l'Ouest

Sous le Ciel de l'Ouest is an astronomy association I co-founded with two friends. It is based in the Ouest lausannois district. Our goal is to bring astronomy to the people, instead of asking them to come to us. Before that, I was a committee member of Callista.

Scientific instruments

KalAO

KalAO is an Adaptive Optics (AO) imager for the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope, based in La Silla Observatory. I started working on it as my Master thesis, and I ended up working on every aspect of it until its commissioning in Chile. KalAO has a fairly traditional design, with a tip-tilt mirror, a deformable mirror, and a Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor. But with its 11 cm sub-apertures, it can nonetheless be categorized as an extreme Adaptive Optics system.

RISTRETTO

RISTRETTO is a high-resolution, diffraction-limited spectrograph, fed by an extreme Adaptive Optics (xAO). Its aim is to detect the reflected light of nearby exoplanets using the spectroscopic coronagraphy technique. RISTRETTO is currently in its design phase at the Geneva Observatory and will be relying on a few novelties, such as a three-sided pyramid wavefront sensor (3-PyWFS), a Phase-Induced Amplitude Apodization Nuller (PIAAN), or a closed-loop Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC).