COLIBRI is one of the two robotic ground follow-up telescopes for the SVOM (Space Variable Object Monitor) mission dedicated to the study of gamma-ray bursts, allowing determination of precise celestial coordinates of the detected bursts. COLIBRI telescope is a two-mirror Ritchey-Chrétien telescope whose concave primary and convex secondary mirrors have diameters of 1325mm and 485mm respectively. The mirrors are currently manufactured at LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille). In this article, the advancement of the work is presented. We also give a global overview and status of the COLIBRI project.
We present an overview of the development of the end-to-end simulations programs developed for COLIBRI (Catching OpticaL and Infrared BRIght), a 1.3m robotic follow-up telescope of the forthcoming SVOM (Space Variable Object Monitor) mission dedicated to the detection and study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The overview contains a description of the Exposure Time Calculator, Image Simulator and photometric redshift code developed in order to assess the performance of COLIBRI. They are open source Python packages and were developed to be easily adaptable to any optical/ Near-Infrared imaging telescopes. We present the scientific performances of COLIBRI, which allows detecting about 95% of the current GRB dataset. Based on a sample of 500 simulated GRBs, a new Bayesian photometric redshift code predicts a relative photometric redshift accuracy of about 5% from redshift 3 to 7.
The Telescopio San Pedro Martir project intends to construct a 6.5m telescope to be installed at the Observatorio Astron´omico Nacional in the Sierra San Pedro M´artir in northern Baja California, Mexico. The project is an association of Mexican institutions, lead by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofısica, Optica y Electronica and UNAM’s Instituto de Astronomia, in partnership with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the University of Arizona’s Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. The project is advancing through the design stage, having completed five design reviews of different subsystems in 2016 and 2017 (enclosure and services: PDR, CDR; optical design: PDR; optics: progress review; telescope: PDR). Once completed, the partners plan to operate the MMT and TSPM as a binational astrophysical observatory.
KEYWORDS: Mirrors, Actuators, Telescopes, Control systems, Finite element methods, Interfaces, Optical components, Active optics, Temperature metrology
The preliminary design for the f/5 Nasmyth tertiary mirror opto-mechanical configuration for the 6.5m Telescopio San Pedro Mártir (TSPM), to be installed at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional (OAN) in the Sierra San Pedro Mártir in Baja California is presented. The proposed system consists of support and alignment of the honeycomb mirror within the cell, the correction of the optical surface deformation, both tasks by means of an active push-pull pneumatic system and the correction of the displacements and rotations transferred by the Tube support structure to the configuration by means of electro-mechanical actuators. This optical configuration and four folded Cassegrain stations will be fully defined after first light of the f/5 Cassegrain configuration, so the requirements and considerations of these positions also need to be taken into account.
We present in this article some of the techniques applied at the Instituto de Astronomía of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IA-UNAM) to the mechanical structural design for astronomical instruments. With this purpose we use two recent projects developed by the Instrumentation Department. The goal of this work is to give guidelines about support structures design for achieving a faster and accurate astronomical instruments design. The main guidelines that lead all the design stages for instrument subsystems are the high-level requirements and the overall specifications. From these, each subsystem needs to get its own requirements, specifications, modes of operation, relative position, tip/tilt angles, and general tolerances. Normally these values are stated in the error budget of the instrument. Nevertheless, the error budget is dynamic, it is changing constantly. Depending on the manufacturing accuracy achieved, the error budget is again distributed. That is why having guidelines for structural design helps to know some of the limits of tolerances in manufacture and assembly. The error budget becomes then a quantified way for the interaction between groups; it is the key for teamwork.
COATLI will provide 0.3 arcsec FWHM images from 550 to 900 nm over a large fraction of the sky. It consists of a robotic 50-cm telescope with a diffraction-limited fast-guiding imager. Since the telescope is small, fast guiding will provide diffraction-limited image quality over a field of at least 1 arcmin and with coverage of a large fraction of the sky, even in relatively poor seeing. The COATLI telescope will be installed at the at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Sierra San Pedro Mártir, México, during 2016 and the diffraction-limited imager will follow in 2017.
COATLI is a new instrument and telescope that will provide 0.3 arcsec FWHM images from 550 to 920 nm over a large fraction of the sky. It consists of a robotic 50-cm telescope with a diffraction-limited imager. The imager has a steering mirror for fast guiding, a blue channel using an EMCCD from 400 to 550 nm to measure image motion, a red channel using a standard CCD from 550 to 920 nm, and an active optics system based on a deformable mirror to compensate static aberrations in the red channel. Since the telescope is small, fast guiding will provide diffraction-limited image quality in the red channel over a large fraction of the sky, even in relatively poor seeing. The COATLI telescope will be installed at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Sierra San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, México, in 2016 and will initially operate with a simple interim imager. The definitive COATLI instrument will be installed in 2017. In this work we present the general optomechanical and control electronics design of COATLI.
DDOTI will be a wide-field robotic imager consisting of six 28-cm telescopes with prime focus CCDs mounted on a common equatorial mount. Each telescope will have a field of view of 12 deg2, will have 2 arcsec pixels, and will reach a 10σ limiting magnitude in 60 seconds of r ≈ 18:7 in dark time and r ≈ 18:0 in bright time. The set of six will provide an instantaneous field of view of about 72 deg2. DDOTI uses commercial components almost entirely. The first DDOTI will be installed at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Sierra San Pedro Martír, Baja California, México in early 2017. The main science goals of DDOTI are the localization of the optical transients associated with GRBs detected by the GBM instrument on the Fermi satellite and with gravitational-wave transients. DDOTI will also be used for studies of AGN and YSO variability and to determine the occurrence of hot Jupiters. The principal advantage of DDOTI compared to other similar projects is cost: a single DDOTI installation costs only about US$500,000. This makes it possible to contemplate a global network of DDOTI installations. Such geographic diversity would give earlier access and a higher localization rate. We are actively exploring this option.
The Reionization and Transients InfraRed camera (RATIR) is a simultaneous optical/NIR multi-band imaging
camera which is 100% time-dedicated to the followup of Gamma-ray Bursts. The camera is mounted on the
1.5-meter Johnson telescope of the Mexican Observatorio Astronomico Nacional on Sierra San Pedro Martir in
Baja California. With rapid slew capability and autonomous interrupt capabilities, the system will image GRBs
in 6 bands (i, r, Z, Y, J, and H) within minutes of receiving a satellite position, detecting optically faint afterglows
in the NIR and quickly alerting the community to potential GRBs at high redshift (z>6-10). We report here
on this Spring's first light observing campaign with RATIR. We summarize the instrumental characteristics,
capabilities, and observing modes.
Alan Watson, Michael Richer, Joshua Bloom, Nathaniel Butler, Urania Ceseña, David Clark, Enrique Colorado, Antolín Córdova, Alejandro Farah, Lester Fox-Machado, Ori Fox, Benjamín García, Leonid Georgiev, J. Jesús González, Gerardo Guisa, Leonel Gutiérrez, Joel Herrera, Christopher Klein, Alexander Kutyrev, Francisco Lazo, William Lee, Eduardo López, Esteban Luna, Benjamín Martínez, Francisco Murillo, José Manuel Murillo, Juan Manuel Núñez, J. Xavier Prochaska, José Luís Ochoa, Fernando Quirós, David Rapchun, Carlos Román-Zúñiga, Gennady Valyavin
The Reionization And Transients Infra-Red (RATIR) camera is intended for robotic operation on the 1.5-meter Harold
Johnson telescope of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional on the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, Mexico.
This paper describes the work we have carried out to successfully automate the telescope and prepare it for RATIR. One
novelty is our use of real-time absolute astrometry from the finder telescopes to point and guide the main telescope.
J. Manuel Nuñez, Eduardo de la Fuente, Esteban Luna, Joel Herrera, Enrique Velazquez, Fernando García, Eduardo López, Jorge Váldez, Benjamín García, Benjamín Martínez, Gerardo Guisa, Fernando Quiroz, Enrique Colorado, José Luis Ochoa, Jaime Almaguer, Arturo Chávez
We present the results of the optical characterization of the mirrors of the telescope of 62cm observatory "SEVERO
DIAZ GALINDO" property of the University of Guadalajara. We use the Ronchi test and a spherometer to measure by
first time, the radius of curvature for the primary and secondary mirror, the parameters of the telescope system were
obtained by using the commercial software ZEMAX. We confirm that both mirrors are adequate to work in the telescope
configuration and to do optical astronomy.
This work presents the specifications, requirements, design, finite element analysis and results of the assembled
subsystems: slit-mask, and the acquisition and guiding zone mechanisms of the ESOPO spectrograph. This spectrograph
is a project of the Institute of Astronomy, National University of Mexico.
The structure of the spectrograph ESOPO is the stiff mount that will maintain fixed all optics elements, electronics and
mechanical subsystems. The ESOPO spectrograph is a project of the "Instituto de Astronomia de la Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico" (IAUNAM) to upgrade its 2.1m telescope as a competitive facility for the next decade.
The scientific purpose is to obtain a modern high efficient intermediate-low dispersion spectrograph optimized for the
3500 - 9000 Å spectral interval with a spectral resolution of 500 ≤ R ≤ 5000. It is to be used at the cassegrain f/7.5 focus
of the 2.1 m telescope for general astronomical purposes. This work presents the mechanical design process and the form
in which the structure was verified to comply with the ESOPO's top level image quality and stability requirements. The
latter was not a lineal process. The way we resolved it is to run FEAs on the complete system and with the instrument in
different operation positions during a normal cycle of observations. These results are validated through the error budget
of the ESOPO. The structure is currently under construction.
We present the dual IR camera CID for the 2.12 m telescope of the
Observatorio Astronomico Nacional de Mexico, IA-UNAM. The system
consists of two separate cameras/spectrographs that operate in
different regions of the IR spectrum. In the near IR, CID comprises a direct imaging camera with wide band filters, a CVF, and a low resolution spectrograph employing an InSb 256 x 256 detector. In the mid IR, CID uses a BIB 128 x 128 detector for direct imaging in 10 and 20 microns. Optics and mechanics of CID were developed at IR-Labs
(Tucson). The electronics was developed by R. Leach (S. Diego). General design, construction of auxiliary optics (oscillating
secondary mirror), necessary modifications and optimization of
the electronics, and acquisition software were carried out at OAN/
UNAM. The compact design of the instruments allow them to share
a single dewar and the cryogenics system.
We describe the recent upgrade of the Manchester Echelle Spectrometer, currently in use at San Pedro Mártir. This upgrade has included a user interface and a new CCD acquisition software. The spectrometer control is now done by a microcontroller, whose inputs are new sensors and encoders installed inside the spectrometer. The instrument control is now fully carried out from a graphical user interface running in a personal computer. The acquisition computer sends the images to the GUI through an ethernet link. In this paper, we present the general scheme and the programs developed for Linux (in C++ and Tcl/Tk) that permits an easy integral operation of the instrument, as well as the creation of scripts intended to the optimization of the observing run and the future interaction with the telescope and the guider. This upgraded system has been operated successfully during several campaigns in the 2.1-meter telescope at Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in San Pedro Mártir.
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