Detalles de publicación
PP 022057
EMIR, the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph for the GTC
1 Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, IAC, Vía Láctea s/n, 38205, La Laguna (S.C. Tenerife), Spain
2 Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, 38206, La Laguna (S.C. Tenerife), Spain
3 Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, ING, 38700 La Palma (S.C. Tenerife), Spain
4 Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica & Instituto de Física de Partículas y del Cosmos (IPARCOS). Universidad Com- plutense de Madrid. 38206, Madrid, Spain
5 Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, CNES, LAM, Marseille, France
6 Dept. of Astronomy. University of Florida, USA
7 European Southern Observatory, ESO, Garching bei München, Germany
8 Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), Université de Toulouse, CNRS, UPS, CNES, 14 Av. Edouard Belin,
31400, Toulouse, France
9 Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Rise,Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
10 Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HA, UK
11 Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidad de Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, E-03690 Alicante, Spain
12 School of Physical Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK
13 Centro de Astronomía (CITEVA), Universidad de Antofagasta, Av. Angamos 601, Antofagasta, 1271155, Chile
We present EMIR, a powerful near–infrared (NIR) camera and multi–object spectrograph (MOS) installed at the Nasmyth focus of the 10.4-m GTC. EMIR was commissioned in mid 2016 and is offered as a common-user instrument. It provides spectral coverage of 0.9 to 2.5 μm over a field of view of 6.67′ × 6.67′ in imaging mode, and 6.67′ × 4′ in spectroscopy. EMIR delivers up to 53 spectra of different objects thanks to a robotic configurable cold slit mask system which sits inside the cryogenic chamber, allowing rapid reconfiguration of the observing mask. The imaging mode is attained by moving all bars outside the FOV and then leaving an empty space in the GTC focal surface. The dispersing suite holds three large pseudo–grisms, formed by the combination of high efficiency FuSi ion-etched ruled transmission grating sandwiched between two identical ZnSe prism, plus one standard replicated grism. These dispersing units offer the spectral recording of an atmospheric window J, H, K in a single shot with resolving powers of 5000, 4250 and 4000 respectively for a nominal slit width of 0.6′′, plus the combined bands YJ or HK, also in a single shot, with resolution ∼ 1000. The original Hawaii2 FPA detector, that is prone to instabilities adding noise to the signal, is being replaced by a new Hawaii2RG detector array, that is currently being tested at the IAC. The paper presents the most salient features of the instrument, with emphasis on its observing capabilities and the functionality of the configurable slit unit. Sample early science data is also shown.