With a possible angular resolution down to 0.1-0.2 millisecond of arc using the 330 m baselines and the access to the 600-900 nm spectral domain, the CHARA Array is ideally configured for focusing on precise and accurate fundamental parameters of stars. CHARA/SPICA (Stellar Parameters and Images with a Cophased Array) aims at performing a large survey of stars all over the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. This survey will also study the effects of the different kinds of variability and surface structure on the reliability of the extracted fundamental parameters. New surface-brightness-colour relations will be extracted from this survey, for general purposes on distance determination and the characterization of faint stars. SPICA is made of a visible 6T fibered instrument and of a near-infrared fringe sensor. In this paper, we detail the science program and the main characteristics of SPICA-VIS. We present finally the initial performance obtained during the commissioning.
@article{arxiv.2210.09096,
title = {CHARA/SPICA: a 6-telescope visible instrument for the CHARA Array},
author = {Denis Mourard and Philippe Berio and Cyril Pannetier and Nicolas Nardetto and Fatme Allouche and Christophe Bailet and Julien Dejonghe and Pierre Geneslay and Estelle Jacqmart and Stéphane Lagarde and Daniel Lecron and Frédéric Morand and Sylvain Rousseau and David Salabert and Alain Spang and Simon Albrecht and Narsireddy Anugu and Laurent Bourges and Theo A. ten Brummelaar and Orlagh Creevey and Sebastien Deheuvels and Armando Domiciano de Souza and Doug Gies and Roxanne Ligi and Guillaume Mella and Karine Perraut and Gail Schaefer and Markus Wittkowski},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.09096},
year = {2022}
}