MUSCAT is a new 1.1 mm band receiver which was installed on the 50 m Large Millimeter Telescope atop Volc´an Sierra Negra in Puebla, Mexico during the final quarter of 2021 and commissioned on sky throughout 2022. MUSCAT uses a novel cooling chain consisting of a commercial pulse tube cooler, two thermal stages of passively-switched continuous sorption coolers, and a final miniature dilution refrigerator. Through this system MUSCAT achieves a continuous temperature of 120 mK at the focal plane and has shown continuous operation at this temperature for greater than 100 days during readiness testing. Through minimising the amount of helium-3 required, the design on MUSCAT’s cryogenic systems produced a reliable, cost-effective cooling platform. Here we present the cryogenic design and performance of MUSCAT on-sky and compare this to that achieved during deployment-readiness testing at Cardiff (UK). We consider both cooldown time and achieved base temperature. We look at the impact on operation of relocating a pulse-tube cooled instrument from a development lab running on a 50 Hz mains electricity supply to a site running at 60 Hz. Finally, we describe the process of preparing the MUSCAT instrument for shipping and assess the success of this process in terms of remedial work required upon arrival.
The MUSCAT camera is a second-generation continuum camera at the 50-m Large Millimetre Telescope (LMT) operating in the 1.1 mm band, installed in late 2021 and commissioned in early 2022. The instrument’s focal plane has 1458 horn-coupled lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKIDs) divided into six arrays deposited on three silicon wafers. This work presents the preliminary on-sky performance results of the focal plane obtained during the commissioning campaign. We characterise the detector’s beam size and shape, mapping the point-like source 3C 279 along the focal plane using raster scans, known as beam mapping. It also allows us to identify which resonance frequencies correspond to each detector located in the focal plane, which leads us to a more complete understanding of the behaviour of the detectors, providing us with a reasonable estimation of the array yield. Finally, we compare these results with those obtained during the characterization of the focal plane in the Cardiff laboratory, previously reported in Tapia et al. 2020.
HARMONI is the first light, adaptive optics assisted, integral field spectrograph for the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). A work-horse instrument, it provides the ELT’s diffraction limited spectroscopic capability across the near-infrared wavelength range. HARMONI will exploit the ELT’s unique combination of exquisite spatial resolution and enormous collecting area, enabling transformational science. The design of the instrument is being finalized, and the plans for assembly, integration and testing are being detailed. We present an overview of the instrument’s capabilities from a user perspective, and provide a summary of the instrument’s design. We also include recent changes to the project, both technical and programmatic, that have resulted from red-flag actions. Finally, we outline some of the simulated HARMONI observations currently being analyzed.
The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano is a bi-national (Mexico and USA) telescope facility constructed on the summit of Sierra Negra, at an altitude of 4600m, in the Mexican state of Puebla. The LMT is a 50-m diameter single-dish telescope, with an active surface control-system to correct gravitational and thermal deformations of the primary reflector, designed and optimized to conduct scientific observations using heterodyne and continuum receivers, as well as VLBI observations, at frequencies between ~70 and 350 GHz. We describe the current status and technical performance of the recently commissioned LMT 50-m, the instrumentation development program, and future engineering upgrades that will optimize the optical efficiency of the telescope and increase its scientific productivity.
The MUSCAT is a binational collaboration, led by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE) and Cardiff University, dedicated to transfer a variety of skills and experience in the development of technologies for the next generation of sub-mm instrumentation. This primary objective includes the capability to design and fabricate LEKID arrays, design and construct optical, mechanical and cryogenic refrigeration systems operating at temperatures below 150 mK, together with the integration and programming of the readout electronics for multiple detector sub-arrays. The successful development and testing of MUSCAT has provided the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) with a large-format millimeter-wavelength camera and a versatile cryogenic platform that can be easily modified to allow the installation of alternative continuum or on-chip spectrometer arrays using different optics, filtering, detector geometries, materials and technologies that can operate at different frequencies.
MUSCAT is a new platform for mm/sub-mm astronomy at the 50m LMT. It is currently configured for 1.1 mm continuum observations with a focal plane consisting of 1458 feedhorn-coupled LEKIDs read out over six frequency division multiplexed RF readout chains with ~250 detectors per readout. We present the performance of the detector readout and tuning system following the initial on-sky commissioning campaign in late 2021. We give details of the readout hardware, the instrument control software, the interfaces between the instrument and telescope control systems, and the automated tuning system for maintaining background-limited performance over the course of an observing night given the varying atmospheric load.
The Mexico-UK Submm Camara for Astronomy (MUSCAT) is a 1.1 mm receiver comprising 1458 Horn-Coupled Lumped Element Kinetic Inductance Detectors (LEKIDs) built through a collaborative effort led by Cardiff University in the UK and the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE) in Mexico. MUSCAT was successfully installed on the 50 m diameter Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano, in December 2021
Here we provide an overview of the MUSCAT platform and present on-sky engineering tests results from scientific commissioning data.
SPICA is a mid to far infra-red space mission to explore the processes that form galaxies, stars and planets. SPICA/SAFARI is the far infrared spectrometer that provides near-background limited observations between 34 and 230 micrometers. The core of SAFARI consists of 4 grating modules, dispersing light onto 5 arrays of TES detectors per module. The grating modules provide low resolution (250) instantaneous spectra over the entire wavelength range. The high resolution (1500 to 12000) mode is accomplished by placing a Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) in front of the gratings. Each grating module detector sees an interferogram from which the high resolution spectrum can be constructed. SAFARI data will be a convolution of complex spectral, temporal and spatial information. Along with spectral calibration accuracy of < 1 %, a relative flux calibration of 1% and an absolute flux calibration accuracy of 10% are required. This paper will discuss the calibration strategy and its impact on the instrument design of SAFARI
The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano is a 50m-diameter single-dish radio telescope constructed at an altitude of 4600 meters on the summit of Volcan Sierra Negra, an extinct volcano in the Mexican state of Puebla. The LMT is a bi-national scientific collaboration between Mexico and the USA, led by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica (INAOE) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The telescope currently operates at wavelengths from 4mm to 1mm, and during the dry winter months the LMT site provides the highest levels of atmospheric transmission and potential future access to submillimeter observing windows. This paper describes the current status and scientific performance of the LMT, the suite of scientific instrumentation and future engineering upgrades that will optimize the optical efficiency of the telescope and increase its scientific productivity.
MUSCAT is a second-generation continuum camera for the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) "Alfonso Serrano", to observe at the 1.1 mm atmospheric window. The camera has 1500 background-limited, horn-coupled lumped- element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKIDs) split across six arrays operating at 130-mK. The detector design for MUSCAT is based on a large-volume, double-meander geometry used as the inductive and two-polarization absorbing section of the LEKID resonator. In this paper we present the optical coupling of the meander to a choked waveguide output, the microwave design of the LEKID architecture, the device fabrication process and results demonstrating the detector sensitivity under a range of optical loads. Also presented are the performance of an aluminum absorbing layer used to minimize the optical cross-talk between detectors.
The Mexico-UK Submillimetre Camera for AsTronomy (MUSCAT) is a 1.1 mm receiver consisting of 1,500 lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKIDs) for the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT; Volcán Sierra Negra in Puebla, México). MUSCAT utilises the maximum field of view of the LMT's upgraded 50-metre primary mirror and is the first México-UK collaboration to deploy a millimetre/sub-mm receiver on the Large Millimeter Telescope. Using a simplistic simulator, we estimate a predicted mapping speed for MUSCAT by combining the measured performance of MUSCAT with the observed sky conditions at the LMT. We compare this to a previously calculated bolometric-model mapping speed and find that our mapping speed is in good agreement when this is scaled by a previously reported empirical factor. Through this simulation we show that signal contamination due to sky fluctuations can be effectively removed through the use of principle component analysis. We also give an overview
TolTEC is a three-band imaging polarimeter for the Large Millimeter Telescope. Simultaneously observing with passbands at 1.1mm, 1.4mm and 2.0mm, TolTEC has diffraction-limited beams with FWHM of 5, 7, and 11 arcsec, respectively. Over the coming decade, TolTEC will perform a combination of PI-led and Open-access Legacy Survey projects. Herein we provide an overview of the instrument and give the first quantitative measures of its performance in the lab prior to shipping to the telescope in 2021.
The Mexico-UK Submillimetre Camera for Astronomy (MUSCAT) is the second-generation large-format continuum camera operating in the 1.1 mm band to be installed on the 50-m diameter Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) in Mexico. The focal plane of the instrument is made up of 1458 horn coupled lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKID) divided equally into six channels deposited on three silicon wafers. Here we present the preliminary results of the complete characterisation in the laboratory of the MUSCAT focal plane. Through the instrument's readout system, we perform frequency sweeps of the array to identify the resonance frequencies, and continuous timestream acquisitions to measure and characterise the intrinsic noise and 1/f knee of the detectors. Subsequently, with a re-imaging lens and a blackbody point source, the beams of every detector are mapped, obtaining a mean FWHM size of ~3.27 mm, close to the expected 3.1 mm. Then, by varying the intensity of a beam filling blackbody source, we measure the responsivity and noise power spectral density (PSD) for each detector under an optical load of 300 K, obtaining the noise equivalent power (NEP), with which we verify that the majority of the detectors are photon noise limited. Finally, using a Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS), we measure the spectral response of the instrument, which indicate a bandwidth of 1.0-1.2 mm centred on 1.1 mm, as expected.
The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano is a bi-national (Mexico and USA) telescope facility operated by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica (INAOE) and the University of Massachusetts. The LMT is designed as a 50-m diameter single-dish millimeter-wavelength telescope that is optimized to conduct scientific observations at frequencies between ~70 and 350 GHz. The LMT is constructed on the summit of Sierra Negra at an altitude of 4600m in the Mexican state of Puebla. The site offers excellent mm-wavelength atmospheric transparency all-year round, and the opportunity to conduct submillimeter wavelength observations during the winter months. Following first-light observations in mid-2011, the LMT began regular scientific operations in 2014 with a shared-risk Early Science observing program using the inner 32-m diameter of the primary reflector with an active surface control system. The LMT has already performed successful VLBI observations at 3mm with the High Sensitivity Array and also at 1.3mm as part of the Event Horizon Telescope. Since early 2018 the LMT has begun full scientific operations as a 50-m diameter telescope, making the LMT 50-m the world´s largest single-dish telescope operating at 1.1mm. I will describe the current status of the telescope project, including the early scientific results from the LMT 50-m, as well the instrumentation development program, the plan to improve the overall performance of the telescope, and the on-going transition towards the formation of the LMT Observatory to support the scientific community in their use of the LMT to study the formation and evolution of structure at all cosmic epochs.
The mm-wavelength sky reveals the initial phase of structure formation, at all spatial scales, over the entire observable history of the Universe. Over the past 20 years, advances in mm-wavelength detectors and camera systems have allowed the field to take enormous strides forward – particularly in the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background – but limitations in mapping speeds, sensitivity and resolution have plagued studies of astrophysical phenomena. In fact, limitations due to inherent biases in the ground-based mm-wavelength surveys conducted over the last 2 decades continue to motivate the need for deeper and wider-area maps made with increased angular resolution. TolTEC is a new camera that will fill the focal plane of the 50m diameter Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) and provide simultaneous, polarization-sensitive imaging at 2.0, 1.4, and 1.1mm wavelengths. The instrument, now under construction, is a cryogenically cooled receiver housing three separate kilo-pixel arrays of Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs) that are coupled to the telescope through a series of silicon lenses and dichroic splitters. TolTEC will be installed and commissioned on the LMT in early 2019 where it will become both a facility instrument and also perform a series of 100 hour “Legacy Surveys” whose data will be publicly available. The initial four surveys in this series: the Clouds to Cores Legacy Survey, the Fields in Filaments Legacy Survey, the Ultra-Deep Legacy Survey and the Large Scale Structure Survey are currently being defined in public working groups of astronomers coordinated by TolTEC Science Team members. Data collection for these surveys will begin in late 2019 with data releases planned for late 2020 and 2021. Herein we describe the instrument concept, provide performance data for key subsystems, and provide an overview of the science, schedule and plans for the initial four Legacy Survey concepts.
The Mexico-UK Sub-millimetre Camera for AsTronomy (MUSCAT) is a large-format, millimetre-wave camera consisting of 1,500 background-limited lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKIDs) scheduled for deployment on the Large Millimeter Telescope (Volcán Sierra Negra, Mexico) in 2018. MUSCAT is designed for observing at 1.1 mm and will utilise the full 40 field of view of the LMTs upgraded 50-m primary mirror. In its primary role, MUSCAT is designed for high-resolution follow-up surveys of both galactic and extra-galactic sub-mm sources identified by Herschel. MUSCAT is also designed to be a technology demonstrator will provide the first on-sky demonstrations of novel design concepts such as horn-coupled LEKID arrays and closed continuous cycle miniature dilution refrigeration.
Here we describe some of the key design elements of the MUSCAT instrument such as the novel use of continuous sorption refrigerators and a miniature dilutor for continuous 100-mK cooling of the focal plane, broadband optical coupling to Aluminium LEKID arrays using waveguide chokes and anti-reflection coating materials as well as with the general mechanical and optical design of MUSCAT. We will explain how MUSCAT is designed to be simple to upgrade and the possibilities for changing the focal plane unit that allows MUSCAT to act as a demonstrator for other novel technologies such as multi-chroic polarisation sensitive pixels and on-chip spectrometry in the future. Finally, we will report on the current status of MUSCAT's commissioning.
E. Carrasco, A. Gil de Paz, J. Gallego, J. Iglesias-Páramo, R. Cedazo, M. L. García Vargas, X. Arrillaga, J. L. Avilés, A. Bouquin, J. Carbajo, N. Cardiel, M. A. Carrera, A. Castillo Morales, E. Castillo-Domínguez, S. Esteban San Román, D. Ferrusca, P. Gómez-Álvarez, R. Izazaga-Pérez, B. Lefort, J. A. López Orozco, M. Maldonado, I. Martínez Delgado, I. Morales Durán, E. Mújica, R. Ortiz, G. Páez, S. Pascual, A. Pérez-Calpena, P. Picazo, A. Sánchez-Penim, E. Sánchez-Blanco, S. Tulloch, M. Velázquez, J. Vílchez, J. Zamorano, A. Aguerri, D. Barrado, E. Bertone, A. Cava, C. Catalán-Torrecilla, J. Cenarro, M. Chávez, B. Dullo, C. Eliche, Mi. García, J. García-Rojas, J. Guichard, R. González-Delgado, R. Guzmán, A. Herrero, N. Huélamo, D. Hughes, J. Jiménez-Vicente, C. Kehrig, R. Marino, I. Márquez, J. Masegosa, D. Mayya, J. Méndez-Abreu, M. Mollá, C. Muñoz-Tuñón, M. Peimbert, P. Pérez-González, E. Pérez-Montero, S. Roca-Fàbrega, M. Rodríguez, J. M. Rodríguez-Espinosa, L. Rodríguez-Merino, L. Rodríguez-Muñoz, D. Rosa-González, J. Sánchez-Almeida, C. Sánchez Contreras, P. Sánchez-Blázquez, S. Sánchez, A. Sarajedini, S. Silich, S. Simón-Díaz, G. Tenorio-Tagle , E. Terlevich, R. Terlevich, S. Torres-Peimbert, I. Trujillo, Y. Tsamis, O. Vega
MEGARA is the new generation IFU and MOS optical spectrograph built for the 10.4m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC). The project was developed by a consortium led by UCM (Spain) that also includes INAOE (Mexico), IAA-CSIC (Spain) and UPM (Spain). The instrument arrived to GTC on March 28th 2017 and was successfully integrated and commissioned at the telescope from May to August 2017. During the on-sky commissioning we demonstrated that MEGARA is a powerful and robust instrument that provides on-sky intermediate-to-high spectral resolutions RFWHM ~ 6,000, 12,000 and 20,000 at an unprecedented efficiency for these resolving powers in both its IFU and MOS modes. The IFU covers 12.5 x 11.3 arcsec2 while the MOS mode allows observing up to 92 objects in a region of 3.5 x 3.5 arcmin2. In this paper we describe the instrument main subsystems, including the Folded-Cassegrain unit, the fiber link, the spectrograph, the cryostat, the detector and the control subsystems, and its performance numbers obtained during commissioning where the fulfillment of the instrument requirements is demonstrated.
A. Gil de Paz, E. Carrasco, J. Gallego, J. Iglesias-Páramo, R. Cedazo, M. L. García-Vargas, X. Arrillaga, J. Avilés, A. Bouquin, J. Carbajo, N. Cardiel, M. Carrera, A. Castillo-Morales, E. Castillo-Domínguez, S. Esteban San Román, D. Ferrusca, P. Gómez-Álvarez, R. Izazaga-Pérez, B. Lefort, J. López-Orozco, M. Maldonado, I. Martínez-Delgado, I. Morales-Durán, E. Mujica, G. Páez, S. Pascual, A. Pérez-Calpena, P. Picazo, A. Sánchez-Penim, E. Sánchez-Blanco, S. Tulloch, M. Velázquez, J. Vílchez, J. Zamorano, A. Aguerri, D. Barrado y Navascues, S. Berlanas, E. Bertone, A. Cava, C. Catalán-Torrecilla, J. Cenarro, M. Chávez, B. Dullo, M. García, J. García-Rojas, J. Guichard, R. González-Delgado, R. Guzmán, A. Herrero, N. Huélamo, D. Hughes, J. Jiménez-Vicente, C. Kehrig, R. Marino, I. Márquez, J. Masegosa, D. Mayya, J. Méndez-Abreu, M. Mollá, C. Muñoz-Tuñón, M. Peimbert, P. Pérez-González, E. Pérez-Montero, M. Rodríguez, J. Rodríguez-Espinosa, L. Rodríguez Merino, L. Rodríguez-Muñoz, D. Rosa-González, J. Sánchez-Almeida, C. Sánchez-Contreras, P. Sánchez-Blázquez, S. Sánchez, A. Sarajedini, S. Silich, S. Simón-Díaz, G. Tenorio-Tagle, E. Terlevich, R. Terlevich, S. Torres-Peimbert, I. Trujillo, Y. Tsamis, O. Vega
On June 25th 2017, the new intermediate-resolution optical IFU and MOS of the 10.4-m GTC had its first light. As part of the tests carried out to verify the performance of the instrument in its two modes (IFU and MOS) and 18 spectral setups (identical number of VPHs with resolutions R=6000-20000 from 0.36 to 1 micron) a number of astronomical objects were observed. These observations show that MEGARA@GTC is called to fill a niche of high-throughput, intermediateresolution IFU and MOS observations of extremely-faint narrow-lined objects. Lyman-α absorbers, star-forming dwarfs or even weak absorptions in stellar spectra in our Galaxy or in the Local Group can now be explored to a new level. Thus, the versatility of MEGARA in terms of observing modes and spectral resolution and coverage will allow GTC to go beyond current observational limits in either depth or precision for all these objects. The results to be presented in this talk clearly demonstrate the potential of MEGARA in this regard.
A. Gil de Paz, E. Carrasco, J. Gallego, J. Iglesias-Páramo, R. Cedazo, M. L. García Vargas, X. Arrillaga, J. L. Avilés, N. Cardiel, M. A. Carrera, A. Castillo-Morales, E. Castillo-Domínguez, J. de la Cruz García, S. Esteban San Román, D. Ferrusca, P. Gómez-Álvarez, R. Izazaga-Pérez, B. Lefort, J. A. López-Orozco, M. Maldonado, I. Martínez-Delgado, I. Morales Durán, E. Mujica, G. Páez, S. Pascual, A. Pérez-Calpena, P. Picazo, A. Sánchez-Penim, E. Sánchez-Blanco, S. Tulloch, M. Velázquez, J. Vílchez, J. Zamorano, A. Aguerri, D. Barrado y Naváscues, E. Bertone, A. Cava, J. Cenarro, M. Chávez, M. García, J. García-Rojas, J. Guichard, R. González-Delgado, R. Guzmán, A. Herrero, N. Huélamo, D. Hughes, J. Jiménez-Vicente, C. Kehrig, R. Marino, I. Márquez, J. Masegosa, Y. Mayya, J. Méndez-Abreu, M. Mollá, C. Muñoz-Tuñón, M. Peimbert, P. Pérez-González, E. Pérez Montero, M. Rodríguez, J. Rodríguez-Espinosa, L. Rodríguez-Merino, L. Rodríguez-Muñoz, D. Rosa-González, J. Sánchez-Almeida, C. Sánchez Contreras, P. Sánchez-Blázquez, F. M. Sánchez Moreno, S. Sánchez, A. Sarajedini, S. Silich, S. Simón-Díaz, G. Tenorio-Tagle, E. Terlevich, R. Terlevich, S. Torres-Peimbert, I. Trujillo, Y. Tsamis, O. Vega
MEGARA (Multi-Espectrógrafo en GTC de Alta Resolución para Astronomía) is an optical Integral-Field Unit (IFU) and Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS) designed for the GTC 10.4m telescope in La Palma that is being built by a Consortium led by UCM (Spain) that also includes INAOE (Mexico), IAA-CSIC (Spain), and UPM (Spain). The instrument is currently finishing AIV and will be sent to GTC on November 2016 for its on-sky commissioning on April 2017. The MEGARA IFU fiber bundle (LCB) covers 12.5x11.3 arcsec2 with a spaxel size of 0.62 arcsec while the MEGARA MOS mode allows observing up to 92 objects in a region of 3.5x3.5 arcmin2 around the IFU. The IFU and MOS modes of MEGARA will provide identical intermediate-to-high spectral resolutions (RFWHM~6,000, 12,000 and 18,700, respectively for the low-, mid- and high-resolution Volume Phase Holographic gratings) in the range 3700-9800ÅÅ. An x-y mechanism placed at the pseudo-slit position allows (1) exchanging between the two observing modes and (2) focusing the spectrograph for each VPH setup. The spectrograph is a collimator-camera system that has a total of 11 VPHs simultaneously available (out of the 18 VPHs designed and being built) that are placed in the pupil by means of a wheel and an insertion mechanism. The custom-made cryostat hosts a 4kx4k 15-μm CCD. The unique characteristics of MEGARA in terms of throughput and versatility and the unsurpassed collecting are of GTC make of this instrument the most efficient tool to date to analyze astrophysical objects at intermediate spectral resolutions. In these proceedings we present a summary of the instrument characteristics and the results from the AIV phase. All subsystems have been successfully integrated and the system-level AIV phase is progressing as expected.
MEGARA (Multi-Espectrógrafo en GTC de Alta Resolución para Astronomía) is an optical Integral-Field Unit and
Multi-Object Spectrograph designed for the GTC (Gran Telescopio de Canarias) 10.4m telescope in La Palma.
MEGARA project has already passed preliminary design review and the optics critical design review, first-light it is
expected to take place at the end of 2016. MEGARA is a development under a GRANTECAN contract.
In this paper we summarize the current status of the LN2 open-cycle cryostat which has been designed by the
“Astronomical Instrumentation Lab for Millimeter Wavelengths” at the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y
Electrónica (INAOE) and emphasize the key parts of the system that have updated since the Preliminary Design, the
main activities related to acceptance, integration, fabrication and maintenance plans which fit into the overall structure of
the management plan of MEGARA are also described. The cryogenic work package of MEGARA has completed all the
design stages and is ready for its Critical Design Review and then proceed to fabrication.
MEGARA is the future integral-field and multi-object spectrograph for the GTC 10.4m telescope located in the
Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos in La Palma. INAOE is a member of the MEGARA Consortium and it is
in charge of the Optics Manufacturing work package. In addition to the manufacturing of 73 elements, the work
package includes the opto-mechanics i.e. the opto-mechanical design, manufacture, tests and integration of the
complete assembly of the main optics composed by the collimator and camera subsystems. MEGARA passed the
Optics Detailed Design Review in May 2013 and will have the Detailed Design Review of the complete instrument
early 2014. Here we describe the detailed design of the collimator and camera barrels. We also present the finite
elements models developed to simulate the behavior of the barrel, sub-cells and other mechanical elements. These
models verify that the expected stress fields and the gravitational displacements on the lenses are compatible with
the optical quality tolerances. The design is finished and ready for fabrication.
MEGARA is the future visible integral-field and multi-object spectrograph for the GTC 10.4-m telescope
located in La Palma. INAOE is a member of the MEGARA Consortium and it is in charge of the Optics
Manufacturing work package. MEGARA passed the Optics Detailed Design Review in May 2013, and the
blanks of the main optics have been already ordered and their manufacturing is in progress. Except for
the optical fibers and microlenses, the complete MEGARA optical system will be manufactured in
Mexico, shared between the workshops of INAOE and CIO. This includes a field lens, a 5-lenses collimator, a
7-lenses camera and a complete set of volume phase holographic gratings with 36 flat windows and 24 prisms,
being all these elements very large and complex. Additionally, the optical tests and the complete assembly of
the camera and collimator subsystems will be carried out in Mexico. Here we describe the current status of the
optics manufacturing process.
A. Gil de Paz, J. Gallego, E. Carrasco, J. Iglesias-Páramo, R. Cedazo, J. Vílchez, M. García-Vargas, X. Arrillaga, M. Carrera, A. Castillo-Morales, E. Castillo-Domínguez, M. Eliche-Moral, D. Ferrusca, E. González-Guardia, B. Lefort, M. Maldonado, R. Marino, I. Martínez-Delgado, I. Morales Durán, E. Mujica, G. Páez, S. Pascual, A. Pérez-Calpena, A. Sánchez-Penim, E. Sánchez-Blanco, S. Tulloch, M. Velázquez, J. Zamorano, A. Aguerri, D. Barrado y Naváscues, E. Bertone, N. Cardiel, A. Cava, J. Cenarro, M. Chávez, M. García, J. Guichard, R. Gúzman, A. Herrero, N. Huélamo, D. Hughes, J. Jiménez-Vicente, C. Kehrig, I. Márquez, J. Masegosa, Y. Mayya, J. Méndez-Abreu, M. Mollá, C. Muñoz-Tuñón, M. Peimbert, P. Pérez-González, E. Pérez Montero, M. Rodríguez, J. Rodríguez-Espinosa, L. Rodríguez-Merino, D. Rosa-González, J. Sánchez-Almeida, C. Sánchez Contreras, P. Sánchez-Blázquez, F. Sánchez Moreno, S. Sánchez, A. Sarajedini, F. Serena, S. Silich, S. Simón-Díaz, G. Tenorio-Tagle, E. Terlevich, R. Terlevich, S. Torres-Peimbert, I. Trujillo, Y. Tsamis, O. Vega, V. Villar
MEGARA (Multi-Espectrógrafo en GTC de Alta Resolución para Astronomía) is an optical Integral-Field Unit (IFU)
and Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS) designed for the GTC 10.4m telescope in La Palma. MEGARA offers two IFU
fiber bundles, one covering 12.5x11.3 arcsec2 with a spaxel size of 0.62 arcsec (Large Compact Bundle; LCB) and
another one covering 8.5x6.7 arcsec2 with a spaxel size of 0.42 arcsec (Small Compact Bundle; SCB). The MEGARA
MOS mode will allow observing up to 100 objects in a region of 3.5x3.5 arcmin2 around the two IFU bundles.
Both the LCB IFU and MOS capabilities of MEGARA will provide intermediate-to-high spectral resolutions
(RFWHM~6,000, 12,000 and 18,700, respectively for the low-, mid- and high-resolution Volume Phase Holographic
gratings) in the range 3650-9700ÅÅ. These values become RFWHM~7,000, 13,500, and 21,500 when the SCB is used.
A mechanism placed at the pseudo-slit position allows exchanging the three observing modes and also acts as focusing
mechanism. The spectrograph is a collimator-camera system that has a total of 11 VPHs simultaneously available (out of
the 18 VPHs designed and being built) that are placed in the pupil by means of a wheel and an insertion mechanism. The
custom-made cryostat hosts an E2V231-84 4kx4k CCD.
The UCM (Spain) leads the MEGARA Consortium that also includes INAOE (Mexico), IAA-CSIC (Spain), and UPM
(Spain). MEGARA is being developed under a contract between GRANTECAN and UCM. The detailed design,
construction and AIV phases are now funded and the instrument should be delivered to GTC before the end of 2016.
MEGARA (Multi-Espectrógrafo en GTC de Alta Resolución para Astronomía) is the new integral field unit (IFU) and
multi-object spectrograph (MOS) instrument for the GTC. The spectrograph subsystems include the pseudo-slit, the
shutter, the collimator with a focusing mechanism, pupil elements on a volume phase holographic grating (VPH) wheel
and the camera joined to the cryostat through the last lens, with a CCD detector inside.
In this paper we describe the full preliminary design of the cryostat which will harbor the CCD detector for the
spectrograph. The selected cryogenic device is an LN2 open-cycle cryostat which has been designed by the
"Astronomical Instrumentation Lab for Millimeter Wavelengths" at INAOE. A complete description of the cryostat
main body and CCD head is presented as well as all the vacuum and temperature sub-systems to operate it. The CCD is
surrounded by a radiation shield to improve its performance and is placed in a custom made mechanical mounting which
will allow physical adjustments for alignment with the spectrograph camera. The 4k x 4k pixel CCD231 is our selection
for the cryogenically cooled detector of MEGARA. The characteristics of this CCD, the internal cryostat cabling and
CCD controller hardware are discussed. Finally, static structural finite element modeling and thermal analysis results are
shown to validate the cryostat model.
A. Gil de Paz, E. Carrasco , J. Gallego , F. Sánchez , J. Vílchez Medina, M. L. García-Vargas, X. Arrillaga, M. A. Carrera, A. Castillo-Morales, E. Castillo-Domínguez, R. Cedazo, C. Eliche-Moral, D. Ferrusca, E. González-Guardia, M. Maldonado, R. Marino, I. Martínez-Delgado, I. Morales Durán, E. Mújica, S. Pascual, A. Pérez-Calpena, A. Sánchez-Penim, E. Sánchez-Blanco, F. Serena, S. Tulloch, V. Villar, J. Zamorano , D. Barrado y Naváscues, E. Bertone, N. Cardiel, A. Cava, J. Cenarro, M. Chávez, M. García, J. Guichard, R. Gúzman, A. Herrero, N. Huélamo, D. Hughes, J. Iglesias, J. Jiménez-Vicente, A. Aguerri, D. Mayya, J. Abreu, M. Mollá, C. Muñoz-Tuñón, S. Peimbert, M. Peimbert, P. Pérez-González, E. Pérez Montero, M. Rodríguez, J. M. Rodríguez-Espinosa, L. Rodríguez-Merino, D. Rosa, J. Sánchez-Almeida, C. Sánchez Contreras, Patricia Sánchez-Blázquez, S. Sánchez, A. Sarajedini, S. Silich, S. Simón, G. Tenorio-Tagle, E. Terlevich, R. Terlevich, I. Trujillo, Y. Tsamis, O. Vega
In these proceedings we give a summary of the characteristics and current status of the MEGARA instrument,
the future optical IFU and MOS for the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). MEGARA is being built
by a Consortium of public research institutions led by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM, Spain)
that also includes INAOE (Mexico), IAA-CSIC (Spain) and UPM (Spain). The MEGARA IFU includes two
different fiber bundles, one called LCB (Large Compact Bundle) with a field-of-view of 12.5×11.3 arcsec2 and
a spaxel size of 0.62 arcsec yielding spectral resolutions between R=6,800-17,000 and another one called SCB
(Small Compact Bundle) covering 8.5×6.7 arcsec2 with hexagonally-shaped and packed 0.42-arcsec spaxels and
resolutions R=8,000-20,000. The MOS component allows observing up to 100 targets in 3.5×3.5 arcmin2. Both
the IFU bundles and the set of 100 robotic positioners of the MOS will be placed at one of the GTC Folded-Cass
foci while the spectrographs (one in the case of the MEGARA-Basic concept) will be placed at the Nasmyth
platform. On March 2012 MEGARA passed the Preliminary Design Review and its first light is expected to
take place at the end of 2015.
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