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Modern astronomical instruments tend to be expensive, massive and built on an ad hoc basis. Devices developed for photonics can replace expensive bulk optics, streamlining instrument development. Here I discuss the challenges and successes in combining photonic technologies and astronomical instrumentation.

Temporal spectral astronomy is a field in which the spectra of astrophysical phenomena can carry spectral lines that exhibit very small variations on timescales as short as milliseconds. These variations nevertheless stay unresolved due to the limitation in temporal resolution of current instruments to the subminute scale [1]. The main issue at present is that both a high spectral resolution and a high temporal resolution cannot be obtained at the same time. This leads to incomplete or unclear theoretical descriptions of some of the most interesting phenomena in astronomy today and their related astrophysical processes.