  The application of photonics to astronomy offers major advantages in the area
of highly-multiplexed spectroscopy, especially when applied to extremely large
telescopes. These include the suppression of the near-infrared night-sky
spectrum [J. Bland-Hawthorn et al, Opt. Express 12, 5902 (2004), S. G.
Leon-Saval et al, Opt. Lett. 30, 2545 (2005)] and the miniaturisation of
spectrographs so that they may integrated into the light-path of individual
spatial samples [J. Bland-Hawthorn et al, Proc SPIE 6269, 62690N (2006)].
Efficient collection of light from the telescope requires multimode optical
fibres and three-dimensional photonic devices. We propose ultrafast laser
inscription (ULI) [R. R. Thomson et al, Opt. Express 15, 11691 (2007)] as the
best technology to fabricate 3D photonic devices for astrophotonic
applications.
