The DDRAGO instrument for COLIBRI 1.3 meter telescope of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, México, will be installed in mid-2024. The structural design of DDRAGO was carried out by applying specific techniques for the development of astronomical instruments. At this work is decribed the mass budget, errors, and mechanical tolerances developed to fulfill the scientific objectives of DDRAGO, as well as the manufacturing methods carried out to satisfy the required geometrical specifications. Also, manufacturing processes such as grinding of reference surfaces of the structural plates, CNC manufacturing, precision drilling and tapping, and anodizing are described. The mechanical assembly of the mechanical support structure was performed in two stages. The first one, for verifying the correct integration of all the structural plates with each other and with the rest of the mechanical components that are supported by it. Then, to ensure compliance with the dimensions and geometric tolerances of the assembled structure before anodizing, the general dimensional metrology was performed with the use of a coordinate machine.
Once the structure was verified and accepted, anodizing was performed. An interesting aspect of this process is that we were able to measure the dimensional difference, as well as the repeatability of the assembly process, before and after anodizing. Finally, the dimensional acceptance reports of the DDRAGO instrument structure are shown and a series of guidelines for the manufacture, assembly, integration, and validation for mechanical structures in astronomical instrumentation are proposed.
ÉBANO will be a new instrument for the 84-cm telescope in the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Sierra de San Pedro Mártir (Baja California Norte, Mexico) that will do integral field spectroscopy over two spectral ranges of 30 nm in wavelength in an unusually large field of view of 6.5×6.5 arcsec. The technique used by ÉBANO allows a wavelength scan over a wide spectral range by tilting a narrow-band filter thus changing the central wavelength of the transmission curve. We plan to begin observations with a complete cartography of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) with a mosaic of over 250 images, a region never fully explored with spatially resolved spectroscopy. Using two different filters we will sample the spectral range that covers the lines of NII, Hα, HeI and SII, and the range that covers OIII and Hβ, which gives ÉBANO a huge scientific potential.
FRIDA is a diffraction-limited imager and integral-field spectrograph for the adaptive-optics focus of the Gran Telescopio Canarias. In imaging mode FRIDA provides scales of 10, 20 and 40 mas/pixel and in IFS mode spectral resolutions of about 1200, 4000 and 30,000. Coronographic masks are available in both modes for highcontrast images. FRIDA is undergoing systems integration and is scheduled to complete system testing at the laboratory in December 2024 and to be delivered to the telescope shortly thereafter. In this contribution we present a summary of its design, fabrication, current status and potential scientific applications.
DDRAGO is the first light instrument for the 1.3-m COLIBRÍ robotic telescope at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional, San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, México (OAN-SPM). COLIBRI was developed by France and Mexico in support of the Sino-French SVOM satellite with its ECLAIRs instrument, designed to provide initial follow-up of GRBs. DDRAGO will also support a much wider program of observations of transient and multi-messenger sources. It is a wide-field multi-channel imager consisting of two parts: DDRAGO and CAGIRE. DDRAGO has blue and red channels, and it also delivers an infrared beam to the CAGIRE imager which will be installed soon after. Here we briefly recall the design and discuss the prototyping, fabrication, integration, and verification of DDRAGO. The installation and commissioning of the instrument at the OAN will start shortly.
The COLIBRÍ robotic observatory is being developed for observing the optical counterparts of GRBs detected by the SVOM satellite. It will be located at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in San Pedro Mártir, México. The project is a collaboration between France and México. For this purpose the astronomical instrument DDRAGO is under the last phase of critical design and starting its construction. The structural design techniques applied for developing DDRAGO are described. The mechanical calculations and finite element analysis of the instrument are included and translated into their respective error budget.
FRIDA is an infrared (0.9 microns- 2.5 microns ) imager and integral field spectrograph that will work in concert with the Gran Telescopio Canarias Adaptive Optics system (GTCAO). We describe the assembly, integration and validation of the FRIDA optics: the manufacture of the optical components at our UNAM workshops; the opto-mechanical assembly including the alignment and interferometric validation tests; the assembly and testing of all of the optics and mechanisms on a the cold bench at room temperature. Finally, the cryogenic subsystems validation, prior to the final assembly and integration of the instrument inside the FRIDA cryostat.
FRIDA is a diffraction-limited imager and integral-field spectrograph for the adaptive-optics focus of the Gran Telescopio Canarias. In imaging mode FRIDA provides scales of 10, 20 and 40 mas/pixel and in IFS mode spectral resolutions of about 1200, 4000 and 30,000. Coronographic masks are available in both modes for high-contrast images. FRIDA is starting systems integration and is scheduled to complete system testing at the laboratory by the end of 2023 and to be delivered to the telescope shortly thereafter. In this contribution we present a summary of its design, fabrication, current status and potential scientific applications.
KEYWORDS: Sensors, Electronics, Control systems, Power supplies, Computing systems, Charge-coupled devices, Fluctuations and noise, Telescopes, Connectors, Camera shutters
When the SVOM mission is fully operational, data from the GRB and GW locations on the sky must be sent to ground stations to study their optical counterparts. Among these telescopes is COLIBRÍ, a Franco-Mexican robotic telescope. Its diameter is 1.3m and its focal length is f/7.2. It is mainly designed to observe the counterpart in the visible and near infrared. In this paper we describe the control system of DDRAGO, the imager component of COLIBRÍ.
We present the design of the DDRAGO wide-field multi-channel imager for the 1.3 meter COLIBRÍ telescope for the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Mexico. The instrument has blue and red channels which have fields of 26 arcmin. It also delivers a faster infrared beam to the CAGIRE imager which has a field of 22 arcmin. The instrument is designed to provide initial follow-up of GRBs detected by the ECLAIRs instrument on the SVOM satellite. DDRAGO is a descendent of the successful RATIR imager, but the optical design is significantly more complex to allow much wider fields. We summarize the optical, optomechanical, structural, and control design
Cosmic explosions have emerged as a major field of astrophysics over the last years with our increasing capability to monitor large parts of the sky in different wavelengths and with different messengers (photons, neutrinos, and gravitational waves). In this context, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) play a very specific role, as they are the most energetic explosions in the Universe. The forthcoming Sino-French SVOM mission will make a major contribution to this scientific domain by improving our understanding of the GRB phenomenon and by allowing their use to understand the infancy of the Universe. In order to fulfill all of its scientific objectives, SVOM will be complemented by a fast robotic 1.3 m telescope, COLIBRI, with multiband photometric capabilities (from visible to infrared). This telescope is being jointly developed by France and Mexico. The telescope and one of its instruments are currently being extensively tested at OHP in France and will be installed in Mexico in spring 2023.
We present an overview of the development of the end-to-end simulations programs developed for COLIBRI (Catching OpticaL and Infrared BRIght), a 1.3m robotic follow-up telescope of the forthcoming SVOM (Space Variable Object Monitor) mission dedicated to the detection and study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The overview contains a description of the Exposure Time Calculator, Image Simulator and photometric redshift code developed in order to assess the performance of COLIBRI. They are open source Python packages and were developed to be easily adaptable to any optical/ Near-Infrared imaging telescopes. We present the scientific performances of COLIBRI, which allows detecting about 95% of the current GRB dataset. Based on a sample of 500 simulated GRBs, a new Bayesian photometric redshift code predicts a relative photometric redshift accuracy of about 5% from redshift 3 to 7.
COLIBRI is one of the two robotic ground follow-up telescopes for the SVOM (Space Variable Object Monitor) mission dedicated to the study of gamma-ray bursts, allowing determination of precise celestial coordinates of the detected bursts. COLIBRI telescope is a two-mirror Ritchey-Chrétien telescope whose concave primary and convex secondary mirrors have diameters of 1325mm and 485mm respectively. The mirrors are currently manufactured at LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille). In this article, the advancement of the work is presented. We also give a global overview and status of the COLIBRI project.
We present in this article some of the techniques applied at the Instituto de Astronomía of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IA-UNAM) to the mechanical structural design for astronomical instruments. With this purpose we use two recent projects developed by the Instrumentation Department. The goal of this work is to give guidelines about support structures design for achieving a faster and accurate astronomical instruments design. The main guidelines that lead all the design stages for instrument subsystems are the high-level requirements and the overall specifications. From these, each subsystem needs to get its own requirements, specifications, modes of operation, relative position, tip/tilt angles, and general tolerances. Normally these values are stated in the error budget of the instrument. Nevertheless, the error budget is dynamic, it is changing constantly. Depending on the manufacturing accuracy achieved, the error budget is again distributed. That is why having guidelines for structural design helps to know some of the limits of tolerances in manufacture and assembly. The error budget becomes then a quantified way for the interaction between groups; it is the key for teamwork.
We present the design concept and validation of a cryogenic lens mount for a noncemented doublet for the near-infrared diffraction limited instrument FRIDA. The design uses an autocentering mount that maintains the relative alignment of the lenses, acting against any displacement that may be induced by external forces by automatically returning the lenses to their nominal positions. Autocentering techniques have been used for instruments at room temperature with relatively relaxed image quality requirements. We present in detail its application to a mount for a cryogenic instrument working at the diffraction limit. The design has been tested on the collimator of FRIDA, a noncemented doublet of CaF2 and S-FTM16. We describe the alignment requirements of the system, and we show the calculations that ensure that the lenses will suffer both appropriate stresses and temperature differences. We present the experimental validation of a prototype, demonstrating that the design delivers an excellent performance without inducing unnecessary stresses on the optical components, provided that the lenses are previously aligned with very high precision.
COATLI is a new instrument and telescope that will provide 0.3 arcsec FWHM images from 550 to 920 nm over a large fraction of the sky. It consists of a robotic 50-cm telescope with a diffraction-limited imager. The imager has a steering mirror for fast guiding, a blue channel using an EMCCD from 400 to 550 nm to measure image motion, a red channel using a standard CCD from 550 to 920 nm, and an active optics system based on a deformable mirror to compensate static aberrations in the red channel. Since the telescope is small, fast guiding will provide diffraction-limited image quality in the red channel over a large fraction of the sky, even in relatively poor seeing. The COATLI telescope will be installed at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Sierra San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, México, in 2016 and will initially operate with a simple interim imager. The definitive COATLI instrument will be installed in 2017. In this work we present the general optomechanical and control electronics design of COATLI.
COATLI is a new instrument and telescope that will provide 0.3 arcsec FWHM images from 550 to 920 nm over a large fraction of the sky. It consists of a robotic 50-cm telescope with a diffraction-limited imager. The imager has a steering mirror for fast guiding, a blue channel using a EMCCD from 400 to 550 nm to measure image motion, a red channel using a standard CCD from 550 to 920 nm, and an active optics system based on a deformable mirror to compensate static aberrations in the red channel. Since the telescope is small, fast guiding will provide diffraction-limited image quality in the red channel over a large fraction of the sky, even in relatively poor seeing. COATLI will be installed at the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional in Baja California, Mexico, in September 2016 and will operate initially with a simple interim imager. The definitive COATLI instrument will be installed in 2017. In this paper, we present some of the details of the optical design of the instrument.
FRIDA is a diffraction-limited imager and integral-field spectrometer that is being built for the adaptive-optics focus of the Gran Telescopio Canarias. In imaging mode FRIDA will provide scales of 0.010, 0.020 and 0.040 arcsec/pixel and in IFS mode spectral resolutions of 1500, 4000 and 30,000. FRIDA is starting systems integration and is scheduled to complete fully integrated system tests at the laboratory by the end of 2017 and to be delivered to GTC shortly thereafter. In this contribution we present a summary of its design, fabrication, current status and potential scientific applications.
COATLI will provide 0.3 arcsec FWHM images from 550 to 900 nm over a large fraction of the sky. It consists of a robotic 50-cm telescope with a diffraction-limited fast-guiding imager. Since the telescope is small, fast guiding will provide diffraction-limited image quality over a field of at least 1 arcmin and with coverage of a large fraction of the sky, even in relatively poor seeing. The COATLI telescope will be installed at the at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Sierra San Pedro Mártir, México, during 2016 and the diffraction-limited imager will follow in 2017.
Curvature wavefront sensors obtain the wave-front aberrations from two defocused intensity images at each side of the pupil plane. Typically, when high modulation speeds are required, as it is the case with Adaptive Optics, that defocusing is done with a fast vibrating membrane mirror. We propose an alternative defocusing mechanism based on an electrowetting variable focus liquid lens. The use of such lenses may perform the required focus modulation without the need of extra moving parts, reducing the overall size of the system.
KEYWORDS: Cameras, Collimators, Mirrors, Current controlled current source, Diffraction, Near infrared, Iterated function systems, Cryogenics, Spectrographs, Prototyping
FRIDA (inFRared Imager and Dissector for the Adaptive optics system of the Gran Telescopio Canarias
(GTC)) is designed as a diffraction limited instrument that will offer broad and narrow band imaging and
integral field spectroscopy capabilities with low, intermediate and high (R ~ 30,000) spectral resolutions, to
operate in the wavelength range 0.9 – 2.5 μm. The integral field unit is based on a monolithic image slicer and
the imaging and IFS observing modes will use the same Teledyne 2Kx2K detector. FRIDA will be based on a
Nasmyth B of GTC, behind the adaptive optics (AO) system. The key scientific objectives of the instrument
include studies of solar system bodies, low mass objects, circumstellar outflow phenomena in advanced stages
of stellar evolution, active galactic nuclei high redshift galaxies, including resolved stellar populations, semidetached
binary systems, young stellar objects and star forming environments. FRIDA subsystems are
presently being manufactured and tested. In this paper we present the challenges to perform the verification of
some critical specifications of a cryogenic and diffraction limited NIR instrument as FRIDA. FRIDA is a
collaborative project between the main GTC partners, namely, Spain, México and Florida.
FRIDA is a diffraction limited imager and integral field spectrometer that is being built for the Gran Telescopio
Canarias. FRIDA has been designed and is being built as a collaborative project between institutions from México, Spain
and the USA. In imaging mode FRIDA will provide scales of 0.010, 0.020 and 0.040 arcsec/pixel and in IFS mode
spectral resolutions R ~ 1000, 4,500 and 30,000. FRIDA is starting systems integration and is scheduled to complete
fully integrated system tests at the laboratory by the end of 2015 and be delivered to GTC shortly after. In this
contribution we present a summary of its design, fabrication, current status and potential scientific applications.
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