IAC Technological Contributions in SPIE 2014

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has participated with more than 20 technological contributions in the Conference and Exhibition "Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation" organized by SPIE (International Society for Optics and Photonics), which have taken place at the Palais des congrès de Montréal (Canada) from 22 to 27 June. This is a biennial event attracting top researchers and developers of instruments for ground-based and airborne telescopes and space exploration systems.

Most of the contributions of the IAC, both talks and posters, refer to technology projects supported by the Severo Ochoa Program:

• QUIJOTE CMB Experiment. Overviews of the project current status and of its second instrument, the TGI (Thirty GHz Instrument), were presented from a technical point of view. The second QUIJOTE telescope has recently been installed at the Observatorio del Teide, in Tenerife, and both that telescope and the TGI are planned to be in commissioning by the end of summer 2014, covering the range of 26 to 36 GHz.
• EMIR. This instrument, a wide-field camera and multi-object near-infrared spectrograph for the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC), isbeing built by a consortium of Spanish and French institutes led by the IAC, and is expected to be installed and commissioned at the GTC by the end of 2014. The results achieved so far during the verification phase at the IAC were reported, together with tests and procedures for optimizing its cooling system, and the automatisms to improve its operation, safety and maintenance.
• WEAVE. Six contributions, with the participation of IAC engineers and researchers, were presented during the Conference on WEAVE, the next generation wide-field spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope, at Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (La Palma). Topics included project overview and current status of WEAVE, its optical and mechanical design, hardware control system, the optical and mechanical design for the prime focus corrector system, and the fiber positioning concept.
• ESPRESSO. The scientific objectives, the status of technical solutions and project aspects of this facility, a modern echelle spectrograph with extreme radial-velocity precision for the VLT (ESO, Chile), were presented. In particular, IAC engineers presented different design solutions for the opto-mechanical mounts of this instrument, which are being designed and will be manufactured, installed and maintained by the IAC.
• HARMONI. A general overview of the technical characteristics and science cases of this first-light integral field spectrograph for the E-ELT was presented. The optical and mechanical design of HARMONI fore-optics, and its Instrument Control Electronics were also described.
• AOLI. The IAC contribution outlined the requirements and preliminary design of a system that simulates the atmospheric turbulence and telescope performance for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), where AOLI will be initially used.
• MuSICa. This instrument is a new concept of image slicer (Multi-Slit Image slicer based on collimator-Camera) that has been designed for the integral field spectrograph of the 4-m European Solar Telescope. The IAC communication presented a prototype of MuSICa for GRIS, the spectrograph of the 1.5-m GREGOR solar telescope located at the Observatorio del Teide.
• CARMENES. The critical design decisions and final design of this instrument, a next-generation radial-velocity echelle spectrograph under construction for the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory, were reported. The status of the science preparation program was also described.
• Wide FastCam. An overview of the instrument’s optomechanics was presented by the IDOM Company, which collaborated with IAC in the design of a high stability optical bench for the implementation of FastCam at the Telescopio Carlos Sánchez (TCS), and is currently collaborating in the implementation of Wide FastCam at the same telescope.

In the Spanish information pavilion, attended by IAC scientists and engineers, our institution shared space with Spanish companies that are regular collaborators of the IAC on various technology projects. The exhibition area of the pavilion contained information on our scientific-technical activity, and also a model of the GTC, designed and built by the IAC.