CUBES Phase A design overview -- The Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope
Abstract
We present the baseline conceptual design of the Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES) for the Very Large Telescope. CUBES will provide unprecedented sensitivity for spectroscopy on a 8 - 10 m class telescope in the ground ultraviolet (UV), spanning a bandwidth of > 100 nm that starts at 300 nm, the shortest wavelength accessible from the ground. The design has been optimized for end-to-end efficiency and provides a spectral resolving power of R > 20000, that will unlock a broad range of new topics across solar system, Galactic and extraglactic astronomy. The design also features a second, lower-resolution (R \sim 7000) mode and has the option of a fiberlink to the UVES instrument for simultaneous observations at longer wavelengths. Here we present the optical, mechanical and software design of the various subsystems of the instrument after the Phase A study of the project. We discuss the expected performances for the layout choices and highlight some of the performance trade-offs considered to best meet the instrument top-level requirements. We also introduce the model-based system engineering approach used to organize and manage the project activities and interfaces, in the context that it is increasingly necessary to integrate such tools in the development of complex astronomical projects.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2203.15352,
title = {CUBES Phase A design overview -- The Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope},
author = {Alessio Zanutta and Stefano Cristiani and David Atkinson and Veronica Baldini and Andrea Balestra and Beatriz Barbuy and Vanessa Bawden P. Macanhan and Ariadna Calcines and Giorgio Calderone and Scott Case and Bruno V. Castilho and Gabriele Cescutti and Roberto Cirami and Igor Coretti and Stefano Covino and Guido Cupani and Vincenzo De Caprio and Hans Dekker and Paolo Di Marcantonio and Valentina D'Odorico and Heitor Ernandes and Chris Evans and Tobias Feger and Carmen Feiz and Mariagrazia Franchini and Matteo Genoni and Clemens D. Gneiding and Mikolaj Kaluszynski and Marco Landoni and Jon Lawrence and David Lunney and Chris Miller and Karan Molaverdikhani and Cyrielle Opitom and Giorgio Pariani and Silvia Piranomonte and Andreas Quirrenbach and Edoardo Maria Alberto Redaelli and Marco Riva and David Robertson and Silvia Rossi and Florian Rothmaier and Walter Seifert and Rodolfo Smiljanic and Julian Sturmer and Ingo Stilz and Andrea Trost and Orlando Verducci and Chris Waring and Stephen Watson and Martyn Wells and Wenli Xu and Tayyaba Zafar and Sonia Zorba},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.15352},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy