Adaptive Optics (AO) is an innovative technique that substantially improves the optical performance of groundbased telescopes. The SOAR Adaptive Module (SAM) is a laser-assisted AO instrument, designed to compensate ground-layer atmospheric turbulence in near-IR and visible wavelengths over a large Field of View. Here we detail our proposal to upgrade SAM, dubbed SAMplus, that is focused on enhancing its performance in visible wavelengths and increasing the instrument reliability. As an illustration, for a seeing of 0.62 arcsec at 500 nm and a typical turbulence profile, current SAM improves the PSF FWHM to 0.40 arcsec, and with the upgrade we expect to deliver images with a FWHM of ≈ 0.34 arcsec - up to 0.23 arcsec FWHM PSF under good seeing conditions. Such capabilities will be fully integrated with the latest SAM instruments, putting SOAR in an unique position as observatory facility.
We present the concept of a new Fabry-Perot instrument called BTFI-2, which is based on the design of another Brazilian instrument for the SOAR Telescope, the Brazilian Tunable Filter Imager (BTFI). BTFI-2 is designed to be mounted on the visitor port of the SOAR Adaptive Module (SAM) facility, on the SOAR telescope, at Cerro Pach´on, Chile. This optical Fabry-Perot instrument will have a field of view of 3 x 3 arcmin, with 0.12 arcsec per pixel and spectral resolutions of 4500 and 12000, at H-alpha, dictated by the two ICOS Fabry-Perot devices available. The instrument will be unique for the study of centers of normal, interacting and active galaxies and the intergalactic medium, whenever spatial resolution over a large area is required. BTFI-2 will combine the best features of two previous instruments, SAM-FP and BTFI: it will use an Electron Multiplication detector for low and fast scanning, it will be built with the possibility of using a new Fabry-Perot etalon which provides a range of resolutions and it will be light enough to work attached to SAM, and hence the output data cubes will be GLAO-corrected.
We present in this paper a performance characterization of an Electron Multiplication CCD (EMCCD) camera which has
been deployed on the Brazilian Tunable Filter Imager (BTFI) instrument for the SOAR telescope in Chile. The BTFI
instrument has two e2v CCD207 EMCCDs with a format of 1600-by-1600 pixels. The CCD207s are full-frame devices
and are read out at a pixel rate of 10MHz with very low noise using an EMCCD controller (the CCD Controller for
Counting Photons or CCCP for short) which was custom-built by a group based in the University of Montreal and is now
commercialized by Nüvü Camēras. The first laboratory characterizations were done in Montreal in October, 2011 and the
"first-light" results with the camera operating at the telescope are presented.
In this paper we present the cryogenic design of the EMCCD (Electron Multiplication Charged Couple Device) cameras
for the Brazilian Tunable Filter Imager instrument for the 4 meters SOAR telescope in Chile. The camera uses a E2V
1600 × 1600 pixels full-frame device, which is controlled by the new CCCP (CCD Controller for Counting Photons), an
EMCCD controller developed by the University of Montreal. We present the design of the camera, its thermal analysis
and cryogenic performance.
Keith Taylor, Cláudia Mendes de Oliveira, Rene Laporte, Christian Guzman, Javier Ramirez Fernandez, Sergio Scarano, Giseli Ramos, Henri Plana, Fernando Lourenco, Jean-Luc Gach, Fernando Fontes, Fabricio Ferrari, Luiz Cavalcanti, Edna Gutierrez Castañeda, Alvaro de Calasans, Philippe Balard, Philippe Amram, Denis Andrade
A scientific and engineering team led by the Department of Astronomy of the IAG, at the
University of São Paulo, is engaged in the development of a highly versatile, new
technology, optical imaging interferometer to be used both in seeing-limited mode and at
high spatial resolution using the SOAR Adaptive Optics Module (SAM: the GLAO
facility for the SOAR telescope). Such an instrument opens up important new science
capabilities for the SOAR astronomical community: from studies of nearby galaxies and
the ISM to statistical cosmological investigations.
The Brazilian Tunable Filter Imager (BTFI) concept takes advantage of two new
technologies that have been successfully demonstrated in the laboratory environment but
have yet to be deployed in any astronomical instrument. The iBTF (imaging Bragg
Tunable Filter) concept utilizes a Volume Phase Holographic Grating in double-pass
configuration (Blais-Ouellette et al. 20061) while the new Fabry-Perot concept involves
the use of commercially available technology allowing a single etalon to act over a very
large range of interference orders. Both technologies will be used in the same instrument.
The combination allows for highly versatile capabilities. Spectral resolutions spanning
the full range between 5 and 35,000 can be achieved in the same instrument through the
use of iBTF at low resolution and scanning Fabry-Perots beyond R ~2,000 with some
overlap in the mid-range.
The instrument is being developed in collaboration with several other Brazilian
Institutions (Poli/USP, INPE, LNA and Unipampa) and international collaborations with the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille and the University of Montreal. The reader
is directed to the URL http://www.astro.iag.usp.br/~btfi/index.php for a full
representation of the project and its current status. The instrument should see first light,
mounted on the SOAR telescope, as a visiting instrument, on semester 2010B.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.