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Register a new userCIRCE: The Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment for the Gran Telescopio Canarias
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Stephen S. Eikenberry
Publication date
2017
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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The Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment (CIRCE) is a near-infrared (1-2.5 micron) imager, polarimeter and low-resolution spectrograph operating as a visitor instrument for the Gran Telescopio Canarias 10.4-meter telescope. It was designed and built largely by graduate students and postdocs, with help from the UF astronomy engineering group, and is funded by the University of Florida and the U.S. National Science Foundation. CIRCE is intended to help fill the gap in near-infrared capabilities prior to the arrival of EMIR to the GTC, and will also provide the following scientific capabilities to compliment EMIR after its arrival: high-resolution imaging, narrowband imaging, high-time-resolution photometry, imaging polarimetry, low resolution spectroscopy. In this paper, we review the design, fabrication, integration, lab testing, and on-sky performance results for CIRCE. These include a novel approach to the opto-mechanical design, fabrication, and alignment.
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We report the analysis of the first deep optical observations of three isolated $gamma$-ray pulsars detected by the {em Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope}: the radio-loud PSR, J0248+6021 and PSR, J0631+1036, and the radio-quiet PSR, J0633+0632. The latter has also been detected in the X rays. The pulsars are very similar in their spin-down age ($tau sim$40--60 kyrs), spin-down energy ($dot{E} sim10^{35}$ erg s$^{-1}$), and dipolar surface magnetic field ($B sim 3$--$5times10^{12}$ G). These pulsars are promising targets for multi-wavelength observations, since they have been already detected in $gamma$ rays and in radio or X-rays. None of them has been detected yet in the optical band. We observed the three pulsar fields in 2014 with the Spanish 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). We could not find any candidate optical counterpart to the three pulsars close to their most recent radio or {em Chandra} positions down to $3 sigma$ limits of $gsim27.3$, $gsim27$, $gsim27.3$ for PSR, J0248+6021, J0631+1036, and J0633+0632, respectively. From the inferred optical upper limits and estimated distance and interstellar extinction, we derived limits on the pulsar optical luminosity. We also searched for the X-ray counterpart to PSR, J0248+6021 with chan but we did not detect the pulsar down to a 3$sigma$ flux limit of $5 times 10^{-14}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ (0.3--10 keV). For all these pulsars, we compared the optical flux upper limits with the extrapolations in the optical domain of the $gamma$-ray spectra and compared their multi-wavelength properties with those of other $gamma$-ray pulsars of comparable age.
HiPERCAM is a portable, quintuple-beam optical imager that saw first light on the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) in 2018. The instrument uses re-imaging optics and 4 dichroic beamsplitters to record $u_s g_s r_s i_s z_s$ ($320-1060$ nm) images simultaneously on its five CCD cameras, each of 3.1 arcmin (diagonal) field of view. The detectors in HiPERCAM are frame-transfer devices cooled thermo-electrically to 183 K, thereby allowing both long-exposure, deep imaging of faint targets, as well as high-speed (over 1000 windowed frames per second) imaging of rapidly varying targets. A comparison-star pick-off system in the telescope focal plane increases the effective field of view to 6.7 arcmin for differential photometry. Combining HiPERCAM with the worlds largest optical telescope enables the detection of astronomical sources to $g_s sim 23$ in 1 s and $g_s sim 28$ in 1 h. In this paper we describe the scientific motivation behind HiPERCAM, present its design, report on its measured performance, and outline some planned enhancements.
SIDE (Super Ifu Deployable Experiment) will be a second-generation, common-user instrument for the Grantecan (GTC) on La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain). It is being proposed as a spectrograph of low and intermediate resolution, highly efficient in multi-object spectroscopy and 3D spectroscopy. SIDE features the unique possibility of performing simultaneous visible and NIR observations for selected ranges. The SIDE project is leaded by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC) in Granada (Spain) and the SIDE Consortium is formed by a total of 10 institutions from Spain, Mexico and USA. The SIDE Feasibility Study has been completed and currently the project is under revision by the GTC Project Office.
SIDE (Super Ifu Deployable Experiment) is proposed as second-generation, common-user instrument for the GTC. It will be a low and intermediate resolution fiber fed spectrograph, highly efficient in multi-object and 3D spectroscopy. The low resolution part (R = 1500, 4000) is called Dual VIS-NIR because it will observe in the VIS and NIR bands (0.4 ~V 1.7 microns) simultaneously. Because of the large number of fibers, a set of ~10 identical spectrographs is needed, each with a mirror collimator, a dichroic and two refractive cameras. The cameras are optimized for 0.4 - 0.95 microns (VIS) and 0.95 - 1.7 microns (NIR) respectively.
We used the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias to search for the optical counterparts to four isolated $gamma$-ray pulsars, all detected in the X-rays by either xmm or chan but not yet in the optical. Three of them are middle-aged pulsars -- PSR, J1846+0919 (0.36 Myr), PSR, J2055+2539 (1.2 Myr), PSR, J2043+2740 (1.2 Myr) -- and one, PSR, J1907+0602, is a young pulsar (19.5 kyr). For both PSR, J1907+0602 and PSR, J2055+2539 we found one object close to the pulsar position. However, in both cases such an object cannot be a viable candidate counterpart to the pulsar. For PSR, J1907+0602, because it would imply an anomalously red spectrum for the pulsar and for PSR, J2055+2539 because the pulsar would be unrealistically bright ($r=20.34pm0.04$) for the assumed distance and interstellar extinction. For PSR, J1846+0919, we found no object sufficiently close to the expected position to claim a possible association, whereas for PSR, J2043+2740 we confirm our previous findings that the object nearest to the pulsar position is an unrelated field star. We used our brightness limits ($g approx 27$), the first obtained with a large-aperture telescope for both PSR, J1846+0919 and PSR, J2055+2539, to constrain the optical emission properties of these pulsars and investigate the presence of spectral turnovers at low energies in their multi-wavelength spectra.
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