CIRCE: The Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment for the Gran Telescopio Canarias
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1709.05542,
title = {CIRCE: The Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment for the Gran Telescopio Canarias},
author = {Stephen S. Eikenberry and Miguel Charcos and Michelle L. Edwards and Alan Garner and Nestor Lasso-Cabrera and Richard D. Stelter and Antonio Marin-Franch and S. Nicholas Raines and Kendall Ackley and John G. Bennett and Javier A. Cenarro and Brian Chinn and H. Veronica Donoso and Raymond Frommeyer and Kevin Hanna and Michael D. Herlevich and Jeff Julian and Paola Miller and Scott Mullin and Charles H. Murphey and Chris Packham and Frank Varosi and Claudia Vega and Craig Warner and A. N. Ramaprakash and Mahesh Burse and Sunjit Punnadi and Pravin Chordia and Andreas Gerarts and Héctor de Paz Martín and María Martín Calero and Riccardo Scarpa and Sergio Fernandez Acosta and William Miguel Hernández Sánchez and Benjamin Siegel and Francisco Francisco Pérez and Himar D. Viera Martín and José A. Rodríguez Losada and Agustín Nuñez and Álvaro Tejero and Carlos E. Martín González and César Cabrera Rodríguez and Jordi Molgó Sendra and J. Esteban Rodriguez and J. Israel Fernádez Cáceres and Luis A. Rodríguez García and Manuel Huertas Lopez and Raul Dominguez and Tim Gaggstatter and Antonio Cabrera Lavers and Stefan Geier and Peter Pessev and Ata Sarajedini and A. J. Castro-Tirado},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.05542},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
41 pages, 18 figures