TIFR and ARIES are jointly developing a Multi-Object Optical to Near Infrared Spectrometer for conducting world’s largest spectroscopic survey of Young Stellar Objects (YSO’s) at Visible and Near Infrared (NIR) wavelength bands simultaneously. This will be installed at the 3.6-meter Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT), at Nainital. The targeted resolution is R~2700. The capability of this instrument is to observe 8-sources simultaneously within the sky field of view (FoV) of 12 arc-min diameter; currently, no other instruments in the world have this capability. This design, what we call deployable slit concept, uses a mirror based pick-up arm system to feed the light from sources at the focal plane to the spectrometer. The 8-arms located around the focal plane brings the light from 8-sources within sky FoV of 12 arcmin diameter to form a compact staggered 1-dimensional slit that forms input to the two arm standard spectrometers. In this manuscript, we present our mechanical design of the prototype of a pickup arm.
TA-MOONS is a multi-object Optical to Near Infrared (NIR) spectrometer with the primary science cases to conduct a spectroscopic survey of Young Stellar Objects (YSO’s) at visible as well as at NIR wavebands simultaneously at a spectroscopic resolution of R~2700. The wavelength coverage of this instrument is from 0.36-2.50 microns. The instrument is jointly developed by TIFR and ARIES, designed for 3.6 meter Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT)1 as a second generation main port instrument. The instrument is capable of observing 8-sources simultaneously within the sky field of view (FoV) of 12 arcmin diameter with its front optics deployable slit (DS) technique. These are mirror based 8-pickup arms located around the telescope focal plane. The DS is a novel concept consisting of tiny mirror-based arms having translation and rotational motion to pick up the source within each arm’s patrol field. This manuscript presents the optical design of front optics and probe viewer/calibration optics. Conceptual idea of the two-arm spectrometer also presented.
The proposed Daksha mission comprises of a pair of highly sensitive space telescopes for detecting and characterizing high-energy transients, such as electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Along with spectral and timing analysis, Daksha can also undertake polarization studies of these transients, providing data crucial for understanding the source geometry and physical processes governing high-energy emission. Each Daksha satellite will have 340 pixelated cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors arranged in a quasi-hemispherical configuration without any field-of-view collimation (open detectors). These CZT detectors are good polarimeters in the energy range 100 to 400 keV, and their ability to measure polarization has been successfully demonstrated by the cadmium zinc telluride imager onboard AstroSat. Here, we demonstrate the hard x-ray polarization measurement capabilities of Daksha and estimate the polarization measurement sensitivity (in terms of the minimum detectable polarization: MDP) using extensive simulations. We find that Daksha will have MDP of 30% for a fluence threshold of 10 − 4 erg cm − 2 (in 10 to 1000 keV). We estimate that with this sensitivity, if GRBs are highly polarized, Daksha can measure the polarization of about five GRBs per year.
Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors, or MKIDS, have the ability to simultaneous resolve the wavelength of individual photons and time tag photons with microsecond precision. This opens up a number of exciting new possibilities and efficiency gains for optical/IR astronomy. In this paper we describe a plan to take the MKID technology, which we have demonstrated on the Palomar, Lick, and Subaru Telescopes, out of the realm of private instruments usable only by experts. Our goal is to incorporate MKIDs into a facility-class instrument at the Keck 1 Telescope that can be used by a large part of the astronomical community. This new instrument, the Keck Radiometer Array using KID ENergy Sensors (KRAKENS), will be a 30 kpix integral field spectrograph (IFS) with a 42.5” x 45” field of view, extraordinarily wide wavelength coverage from 380-1350 nm, and a spectral resolution R=λ/▵λ > 20 at 400 nm. Future add on modules could enable polarimetry and higher spectral resolution. KRAKENS will be built using the same style MKID arrays, cryostat, and similar readout electronics to those used in the successful 10 kpix DARKNESS instrument at Palomar and 20 kpix MEC instrument at Subaru, significantly reducing the technical risk.
We have created a new autonomous laser-guide-star adaptive-optics (AO) instrument on the 60-inch (1.5-m) telescope at Palomar Observatory called Robo-AO. The instrument enables diffraction-limited resolution observing in the visible and near-infrared with the ability to observe well over one-hundred targets per night due to its fully robotic operation. Robo-AO is being used for AO surveys of targets numbering in the thousands, rapid AO imaging of transient events and long-term AO monitoring not feasible on large diameter telescope systems. We have taken advantage of cost-effective advances in deformable mirror and laser technology while engineering Robo-AO with the intention of cloning the system for other few-meter class telescopes around the world.
Robo-AO is the first astronomical laser guide star adaptive optics (AO) system designed to operate completely independent of human supervision. A single computer commands the AO system, the laser guide star, visible and near-infrared science cameras (which double as tip-tip sensors), the telescope, and other instrument functions. Autonomous startup and shutdown sequences as well as concatenated visible observations were demonstrated in late 2011. The fully robotic software is currently operating during a month long demonstration of Robo- AO at the Palomar Observatory 60-inch telescope.
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