No Arabic abstract
The MCAO Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph (MAVIS) Adaptive Optics Module has very demanding goals to support science in the optical: providing 15% SR in V band on a large FoV of 30arcsec diameter in standard atmospheric conditions at Paranal. It will be able to work in closed loop on up to three natural guide stars down to H=19, providing a sky coverage larger than 50% in the south galactic pole. Such goals and the exploration of a large MCAO system parameters space have required a combination of analytical and end- to-end simulations to assess performance, sky coverage and drive the design. In this work we report baseline performance, statistical sky coverage and parameters sensitivity analysis done in the phase-A instrument study.
The Y.T. Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA) started scientific operation in early 2007. This work describes the optimization of the system performance for the measurements of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect for six massive galaxy clusters at redshifts $0.09 - 0.32$. We achieved a point source sensitivity of $63pm 7$ mJy with the seven 0.6m dishes in 1 hour of on-source integration in 2-patch differencing observations. We measured and compensated for the delays between the antennas of our platform-mounted interferometer. Beam switching was used to cancel instrumental instabilities and ground pick up. Total power and phase stability were good on time scales of hours, and the system was shown to integrate down on equivalent timescales of 300 hours per baseline/correlation, or about 10 hours for the entire array. While the broadband correlator leads to good sensitivity, the small number of lags in the correlator resulted in poorly measured bandpass response. We corrected for this by using external calibrators (Jupiter and Saturn). Using Jupiter as the flux standard, we measured the disk brightness temperature of Saturn to be $149^{+5}_{-12}$ K.
The use of Immersed Gratings offers advantages for both space- and ground-based spectrographs. As diffraction takes place inside the high-index medium, the optical path difference and angular dispersion are boosted proportionally, thereby allowing a smaller grating area and a smaller spectrometer size. Short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectroscopy is used in space-based monitoring of greenhouse and pollution gases in the Earth atmosphere. On the extremely large telescopes currently under development, mid-infrared high-resolution spectrographs will, among other things, be used to characterize exo-planet atmospheres. At infrared wavelengths, Silicon is transparent. This means that production methods used in the semiconductor industry can be applied to the fabrication of immersed gratings. Using such methods, we have designed and built immersed gratings for both space- and ground-based instruments, examples being the TROPOMI instrument for the European Space Agency Sentinel-5 precursor mission, Sentinel-5 (ESA) and the METIS (Mid-infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph) instrument for the European Extremely Large Telescope. Three key parameters govern the performance of such gratings: The efficiency, the level of scattered light and the wavefront error induced. In this paper we describe how we can optimize these parameters during the design and manufacturing phase. We focus on the tools and methods used to measure the actual performance realized and present the results. In this paper, the bread-board model (BBM) immersed grating developed for the SWIR-1 channel of Sentinel-5 is used to illustrate this process. Stringent requirements were specified for this grating for the three performance criteria. We will show that -with some margin- the performance requirements have all been met.
The Small Telescopes Installed at the Liverpool Telescope (STILT) have been in operation since March 2009, collecting wide field data from their position, mounted to the Liverpool Telescope. The two instruments; SkycamT and SkycamZ have been used to create a variability search of the skies visible at La Palma with the limits of 12th and 18th R band magnitude with fields of view of 21x21 and 1x1 degrees. We provide here a description of the hardware and software setup and the performance of the system to date.
Current experiments aimed at measuring the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) use cryogenic detector arrays and cold optical systems to boost the mapping speed of the sky survey. For these reasons, large volume cryogenic systems, with large optical windows, working continuously for years, are needed. Here we report on the cryogenic system of the QUBIC (Q and U Bolometric Interferometer for Cosmology) experiment: we describe its design, fabrication, experimental optimization and validation in the Technological Demonstrator configuration. The QUBIC cryogenic system is based on a large volume cryostat, using two pulse-tube refrigerators to cool at ~3K a large (~1 m^3) volume, heavy (~165kg) instrument, including the cryogenic polarization modulator, the corrugated feedhorns array, and the lower temperature stages; a 4He evaporator cooling at ~1K the interferometer beam combiner; a 3He evaporator cooling at ~0.3K the focal-plane detector arrays. The cryogenic system has been tested and validated for more than 6 months of continuous operation. The detector arrays have reached a stable operating temperature of 0.33K, while the polarization modulator has been operated from a ~10K base temperature. The system has been tilted to cover the boresight elevation range 20 deg -90 deg without significant temperature variations. The instrument is now ready for deployment to the high Argentinean Andes.
MAVIS (MCAO-Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph) is an instrument proposed for the VLT Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF), which is currently in the phase-A conceptual design study. It will be the first instrument performing Multi-conjugate adaptive optics at visible wavelengths, enabling a new set of science observations. MAVIS will be installed at the Nasmyth platform of VLT UT-4 taking advantage of the already operational Adaptive Optics Facility that consists of 4 LGS and an adaptive secondary mirror with 1170 actuators. In addition, two post-focal deformable mirrors and 3 Natural Guide Stars (NGS) are foreseen for the tomographic reconstruction and correction of atmospheric turbulence. The MAVIS AO module is intended to feed both an imager and a spectrograph that will take advantage of the increased resolution and depth with respect to current instrumentation. In this paper we present the trade-off study for the optical design of the MAVIS AO module, highlighting the peculiarities of the system and the requirements imposed by AO. We propose a set of possible optical solutions able to provide a compact and efficient implementation of the different subsystems and we compare them in terms of delivered optical quality, overall throughput, encumbrance, ease of alignment and residual distortion.