This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 8446, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, and Conference Committee listing.

In this paper we describe both recently completed instrumentation projects and our current development efforts in terms of their role in the strategic plan, the key science areas they address, and their performance as measured or predicted. Projects reaching completion in 2012 include MOSFIRE, a near IR multi-object spectrograph, a laser guide star adaptive optics facility on the Keck I telescope, and an upgrade to the guide camera for the HIRES instrument on Keck I. Projects in development include a new seeing limited integral field spectrograph for the visible wavelength range called the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI), an upgrade to the telescope control systems on both Keck telescopes, a near-IR tip/tilt sensor for the Keck I adaptive optics system, and a new grating for the OSIRIS integral field spectrograph.

The ESO instrumentation programme now encompasses both an on-going programme for La-Silla Paranal observatory and a new programme for construction of the instruments for the E-ELT. The scale and ambition of the combined programme will present a future challenge for the European instrument-building community and for ESO as managing organisation. The current status and plans are summarised.

In these two years, FMOS was fully commissioned and the laser guide star mode of AO188 became available for open use. The telescope was recovered from coolant leak accident and the two damaged instruments, Suprime-Cam and FOCAS, will both be back in operation in 2012. All the components of the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) were transported to the telescope site and on-sky engineering will start in the summer 2012. As a future facility instrument, Prime-Focus Spectrograph (PFS), an optical to near-IR multi-object spectrograph with 2400 fibers, was endorsed by Japanese community and the project is in PDR phase. Upgrading MOIRCS, IRCS and HDS are on going. Several visiting instruments are also planed. The feasibility of a ground-layer AO with a wide-field NIR instrument is beeing investigated for a possible next facility instrument after PFS.

The Gemini Observatory is going through an extraordinary time with astronomical instrumentation. New powerful capabilities are delivered and are soon entering scientific operations. In parallel, new instruments are being planned and designed to align the strategy with community needs and enhance the competitiveness of the Observatory for the next decade. We will give a broad overview of the instrumentation program, focusing on achievements, challenges and strategies within a scientific, technical and management perspective. In particular we will discuss the following instruments and projects (some will have dedicated detailed papers in this conference): GMOS-CCD refurbishment, FLAMINGOS-2, GeMS (MCAO system and imager GSAOI), GPI, new generation of A&G, GRACES (fiber feed to CFHT ESPaDOnS) and GHOS (Gemini High-resolution Optical Spectrograph), and provide some updates about detector controllers, mid-IR instruments, Altair, GNIRS, GLAO and future workhorse instruments.

An overview of instrumentation for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is presented. Optical instrumentation includes the Large Binocular Camera (LBC), a pair of wide-field (27′ x 27′) mosaic CCD imagers at the prime focus, and the Multi-Object Double Spectrograph (MODS), a pair of dual-beam blue-red optimized long-slit spectrographs mounted at the left and right direct F/15 Gregorian foci incorporating multiple slit masks for multi-object spectroscopy over a 6′ field and spectral resolutions of up to 2000. Infrared instrumentation includes the LBT Near-IR Spectroscopic Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research (LUCI), a modular near-infrared (0.9–2.5 μm) imager and spectrograph pair mounted at the left and right front bent F/15 Gregorian foci and designed for seeing-limited (FOV: 4′ × 4′) imaging, long-slit spectroscopy, and multiobject spectroscopy utilizing cooled slit masks and diffraction limited (FOV: 0′.5 × 0′.5) imaging and long-slit spectroscopy. Strategic instruments under development that can utilize the full 23–m baseline of the LBT include an interferometric cryogenic beam combiner with near-infrared and thermal-infrared instruments for Fizeau imaging and nulling interferometry (LBTI) and an optical bench near-infrared beam combiner utilizing multi-conjugate adaptive optics for high angular resolution and sensitivity (LINC-NIRVANA). LBTI is currently undergoing commissioning on the LBT and utilizing the installed adaptive secondary mirrors in both single– sided and two–sided beam combination modes. In addition, a fiber-fed bench spectrograph (PEPSI) capable of ultra high resolution spectroscopy and spectropolarimetry (R = 40,000–300,000) will be available as a principal investigator instrument. Over the past four years the LBC pair, LUCI1, and MODS1 have been commissioned and are now scheduled for routine partner science observations. The delivery of both LUCI2 and MODS2 is anticipated before the end of 2012. The availability of all these instruments mounted simultaneously on the LBT permits unique science, flexible scheduling, and improved operational support.

Beyond 2020 La Silla - Paranal Observatory (LSP) will still play, together with ALMA and the E-ELT, a crucial role in European ground based astronomy. ESO has created a dedicated LSP Instrumentation program, with the aim of keeping its instrumentation at the forefront beyond year 2020, in the ELT era. The LSP instrumentation program is fully dedicated to this task, and foresees, in addition to the completion of running projects (IInd generation VLT/I instruments, Adaptive Secondary for the VLT) to start one new project every year in the 2014 - 2020 period. A roadmap for the development of the instrumentation plan is also being developed.

SALT HRS is a fibre-fed, high dispersion échelle spectrograph currently being constructed for the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). In this paper we highlight the performance of key optical components, describe the integration tasks that have taken place and present some first light results from the laboratory. The instrument construction is well advanced and we report on the attainment of the required mechanical and thermal stability and provide a measurement of the input optics performance (including the fibre feed). The initial optical alignment of both the fibre input optics, including image slicers, and the spectrograph optics has taken place and is described.

CHIRON is a fiber-fed Echelle spectrograph with observing modes for resolutions from 28,000 to 120,000, built primarily for measuring precise radial velocities (RVs). We present the instrument performance as determined during integration and commissioning. We discuss the PSF, the effect of glass inhomogeneity on the cross-dispersion prism, temperature stabilization, stability of the spectrum on the CCD, and detector characteristics. The RV precision is characterized, with an iodine cell or a ThAr lamp as the wavelength reference. Including all losses from the sky to the detector, the overall efficiency is about 6%; the dominant limitation is coupling losses into the fiber due to poor guiding.

We present an overview of the VISIR upgrade project. VISIR is the mid-infrared imager and spectrograph at ESO’s VLT. The project team is comprised of ESO staff and members of the original VISIR consortium: CEA Saclay and ASTRON. The project plan is based on input from the ESO user community with the goal of enhancing the scientific performance and efficiency of VISIR by a combination of measures: installation of improved hardware, optimization of instrument operations and software support. The cornerstone of the upgrade is the 1k by 1k Si:As Aquarius detector array (Raytheon) which has demonstrated very good performance (sensitivity, stability) in the laboratory IR detector test facility (modified TIMMI 2 instrument). A prism spectroscopic mode will cover the N-band in a single observation. New scientific capabilities for high resolution and high-contrast imaging will be offered by sub-aperture mask (SAM) and phase-mask coronagraphic (4QPM/AGPM) modes. In order to make optimal use of favourable atmospheric conditions a water vapour monitor has been deployed on Paranal, allowing for real-time decisions and the introduction of a userdefined constraint on water vapour. Improved pipelines based on the ESO Reflex concept will provide better support to astronomers. The upgraded VISIR will be a powerful instrument providing background limited performance for diffraction-limited observations at an 8-m telescope. It will offer synergy with facilities such as ALMA, JWST, VLTI and SOFIA, while a wealth of targets is available from survey work (e.g. VISTA, WISE). In addition it will bring confirmation of the technical readiness and scientific value of several aspects of potential mid-IR instrumentation at Extremely Large Telescopes. The intervention on VISIR and installation of hardware has been completed in July and commissioning will take place during July and August. VISIR is scheduled to be available to the users starting Oct 2012.

ARCONS, the Array Camera for Optical to Near-infrared Spectrophotometry, was recently commissioned at the Coude focus of the 200-inch Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory. At the heart of this unique instrument is a 1024-pixel Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector (MKID), exploiting the Kinetic Inductance effect to measure the energy of the incoming photon to better than several percent. The ground-breaking instrument is lens coupled with a pixel scale of 0.23"/pixel, with each pixel recording the arrival time (< 2 _μsec) and energy of a photon (~10%) in the optical to near-IR (0.4-1.1 microns) range. The scientific objectives of the instrument include the rapid follow-up and classi_cation of the transient phenomena

The Multi-Object Double Spectrographs (MODS) are two identical high-throughput optical dichroic-split double-beam low- to medium-dispersion CCD spectrometers being deployed at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). They operate in the 3200-10500Å range at a nominal resolution of λ/δλ≈2000. MODS1 saw first-light at the LBT in September 2010, finished primary commissioning in May 2011, and began regular partner science operations in September 2011. MODS2 is being readied for delivery and installation at the end of 2012. This paper describes the on-sky performance of MODS1 and presents highlights from the first year of science operations.

The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) uses a dedicated 300-fiber, narrow-band near-infrared (1.51-1.7 μm), high resolution (R~22,500) spectrograph to survey approximately 100,000 giant stars across the Milky Way. This three-year survey, in operation since late-summer 2011 as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS III), will revolutionize our understanding of the kinematical and chemical enrichment histories of all Galactic stellar populations. We present the performance of the instrument from its first year in operation. The instrument is housed in a separate building adjacent to the 2.5-m SDSS telescope and fed light via approximately 45-meter fiber runs from the telescope. The instrument design includes numerous innovations including a gang connector that allows simultaneous connection of all fibers with a single plug to a telescope cartridge that positions the fibers on the sky, numerous places in the fiber train in which focal ratio degradation had to be minimized, a large mosaic-VPH (290 mm x 475 mm elliptically-shaped recorded area), an f/1.4 six-element refractive camera featuring silicon and fused silica elements with diameters as large as 393 mm, three near-infrared detectors mounted in a 1 x 3 mosaic with sub-pixel translation capability, and all of these components housed within a custom, LN2-cooled, stainless steel vacuum cryostat with dimensions 1.4-m x 2.3-m x 1.3-m.

We report on the design, on-sky performance, and status of the FLAMINGOS-2 instrument – the fully-cryogenic facility near-infrared imager and multi-object spectrograph for the Gemini 8-meter telescopes. FLAMINGOS-2 has a refractive all-spherical optical system providing 0.18-arcsecond pixels and a 6.2-arcminute circular field-of-view on a 2048x2048- pixel HAWAII-2 0.9-2.4 μm detector array. A slit/decker wheel mechanism allows the selection of up to 9 multi-object laser-machined plates or 3 long slits for spectroscopy over a 6x2-arcminute field of view, and selectable grisms provide resolutions from ~1300 to ~3000 over the entire spectrograph bandpass. FLAMINGOS-2 is also compatible with the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system, providing multi-object spectroscopic capabilities over a 3x1-arcminute field with high spatial resolution (0.09-arcsec/pixel). We review the designs of optical, mechanical, electronics, software, and On-Instrument WaveFront Sensor subsystems. We also present the on-sky performance measured during acceptance testing in 2009, as well as current status of the project and future plans.

This paper describes the as-built performance of MOSFIRE, the multi-object spectrometer and imager for the Cassegrain focus of the 10-m Keck 1 telescope. MOSFIRE provides near-infrared (0.97 to 2.41 μm) multi-object spectroscopy over a 6.1' x 6.1' field of view with a resolving power of R~3,500 for a 0.7" (0.508 mm) slit (2.9 pixels in the dispersion direction), or imaging over a field of view of ~6.9' diameter with ~0.18" per pixel sampling. A single diffraction grating can be set at two fixed angles, and order-sorting filters provide spectra that cover the K, H, J or Y bands by selecting 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th order respectively. A folding flat following the field lens is equipped with piezo transducers to provide tip/tilt control for flexure compensation at the <0.1 pixel level. Instead of fabricated focal plane masks requiring frequent cryo-cycling of the instrument, MOSFIRE is equipped with a cryogenic Configurable Slit Unit (CSU) developed in collaboration with the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM). Under remote control the CSU can form masks containing up to 46 slits with ~0.007-0.014" precision. Reconfiguration time is < 6 minutes. Slits are formed by moving opposable bars from both sides of the focal plane. An individual slit has a length of 7.0" but bar positions can be aligned to make longer slits in increments of 7.5". When masking bars are retracted from the field of view and the grating is changed to a mirror, MOSFIRE becomes a wide-field imager. The detector is a 2K x 2K H2-RG HgCdTe array from Teledyne Imaging Sensors with low dark current and low noise. Results from integration and commissioning are presented.

KMOS is a multi-object near-infrared integral field spectrograph being built by a consortium of UK and German institutes. We report on the final integration and test phases of KMOS, and its performance verification, prior to commissioning on the ESO VLT later this year.

Fiber Multi Object Spectrograph “FMOS” on Subaru Telescope is capable of configuring 400 fibers on the 30- arcmin diameter field of view at the prime focus for near-infrared (0.9–1.8 μm) spectroscopy, and this instrument has been open as a common-use instrument since May 2010. In this article, an overview of the instrument is given first, and then the typical operational sequence in science observation and a few notable features of the instrument are explained. In (see manuscript) 5, the instrument performance in terms of fiber positioning, auto guiding, and sensitivity to emission lines are highlighted. Recently (since March 2012) a Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) has started with FMOS to conduct a wide-field galaxy survey for a cosmological experiment. Upgrading fiber configuration by using a “metrology camera” has also been under discussion, which will enable to measure the positions of the 400 fibers quickly and shorten the fiber configuration time significantly. We will also report the status of these recent activities.

The Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) consists of a baseline build of 150 identical spectrographs (arrayed as 75 units, each with a pair of spectrographs) fed by 33,600 fibers, each 1.5 arcsec diameter, deployed over the 22 arcminute field of the upgraded 10 m Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). The goal is to deploy 82 units. VIRUS has a fixed bandpass of 350-550 nm and resolving power R~700. VIRUS is the first example of industrial-scale replication applied to optical astronomy and is capable of spectral surveys of large areas of sky. This approach, in which a relatively simple, inexpensive, unit spectrograph is copied in large numbers, offers significant savings of engineering effort, cost, and schedule when compared to traditional instruments. The main motivator for VIRUS is to map the evolution of dark energy for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) using 0.8M Lyman-α emitting galaxies as tracers. The full VIRUS array is due to be deployed by early 2014 and will provide a powerful new facility instrument for the HET, well suited to the survey niche of the telescope. VIRUS and HET will open up wide-field surveys of the emission-line universe for the first time. We present the production design and current status of VIRUS.

Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector (MKID) arrays, recently demonstrated at the Palomar 200 inch telescope, are a new superconducting detector technology that has great potential for astrophysics. We propose a new type of instrument, a Superconducting Multi-Object Spectrograph (SuperMOS), that uses MKIDs in conjunction with a focal plane mask. We present the design and science goals of a SuperMOS designed for LSST follow-up named Giga-z. Housing a 100,000 pixel MKID array with energy resolution R=50{100 and a 0.35-1.35 μm bandwidth, it will be capable of measuring 2 billion spectra and determining redshifts over 20,000 square degrees in 3 years down to m_i ≈ 24.5 on a dedicated 4-meter telescope. Compared to LSST alone, Giga-z should improve the redshift precision by a factor of three with a much lower catastrophic failure rate.

We present the preliminary design of the WEAVE next generation spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), principally targeting optical ground-based follow up of upcoming ground-based (LOFAR) and spacebased (Gaia) surveys. WEAVE is a multi-object and multi-IFU facility utilizing a new 2 degree prime focus field of view at the WHT, with a buffered pick and place positioner system hosting 1000 multi-object (MOS) fibres or up to 30 integral field units for each observation. The fibres are fed to a single spectrograph, with a pair of 8k(spectral) x 6k (spatial) pixel cameras, located within the WHT GHRIL enclosure on the telescope Nasmyth platform, supporting observations at R~5000 over the full 370-1000nm wavelength range in a single exposure, or a high resolution mode with limited coverage in each arm at R~20000.

[The BigBOSS experiment is a redshift survey designed to map the large scale structure of the universe and probe the nature of dark energy. Using massively-multiplexed _ber spectroscopy over 14,000 deg² of sky, the survey will deliver more than 20 million galaxy and quasar redshifts. The resulting three dimensional sky map will contain signatures from primordial baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) that set a "standard ruler" distance scale. Using the BAO signature, BigBOSS will measure the cosmological distance scale to < 1% accuracy from 0.5<z<3.0, shedding new light on the expansion history and growth of large scale structure in the Universe at a time when dark energy began to dominate. In this work, we give an overview of the BigBOSS survey goals and methodology, focusing on measuring the [O II] λ3727 emission line doublet from star-forming galaxies. We detail a new spectral simulation tool used in generating BigBOSS observations for emission-line galaxy targets. We perform a trade study of the detected galaxy redshift distribution under two observational cases relative to the baseline survey and discuss the impact on the BigBOSS science goal.

CARMENES (Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exo-earths with Near-infrared and optical Echelle Spectrographs) is a next-generation instrument for the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory, built by a consortium of eleven Spanish and German institutions. The CARMENES instrument consists of two separate échelle spectrographs covering the wavelength range from 0.55 μm to 1.7 μm at a spectral resolution of R = 82, 000, fed by fibers from the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. Both spectrographs are housed in temperature-stabilized vacuum tanks, to enable a long-term 1 m/s radial velocity precision employing a simultaneous calibration with Th-Ne and U-Ne emission line lamps. CARMENES has been optimized for a search for terrestrial planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of low-mass stars, which may well provide our first chance to study environments capable of supporting the development of life outside the Solar System. With its unique combination of optical and near-infrared ´echelle spectrographs, CARMENES will provide better sensitivity for the detection of low-mass planets than any comparable instrument, and a powerful tool for discriminating between genuine planet detections and false positives caused by stellar activity. The CARMENES survey will target 300 M dwarfs in the 2014 to 2018 time frame.

MOONS is a new conceptual design for a Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope (VLT), selected by ESO for a Phase A study. The baseline design consists of ~1000 fibers deployable over a field of view of ~500 square arcmin, the largest patrol field offered by the Nasmyth focus at the VLT. The total wavelength coverage is 0.8μm-1.8μm and two resolution modes: medium resolution and high resolution. In the medium resolution mode (R~4,000-6,000) the entire wavelength range 0.8μm-1.8μm is observed simultaneously, while the high resolution mode covers simultaneously three selected spectral regions: one around the CaII triplet (at R~8,000) to measure radial velocities, and two regions at R~20,000 one in the J-band and one in the H-band, for detailed measurements of chemical abundances. The grasp of the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) combined with the large multiplex and wavelength coverage of MOONS – extending into the near-IR – will provide the observational power necessary to study galaxy formation and evolution over the entire history of the Universe, from our Milky Way, through the redshift desert and up to the epoch of re-ionization at z<8-9. At the same time, the high spectral resolution mode will allow astronomers to study chemical abundances of stars in our Galaxy, in particular in the highly obscured regions of the Bulge, and provide the necessary follow-up of the Gaia mission. Such characteristics and versatility make MOONS the long-awaited workhorse near-IR MOS for the VLT, which will perfectly complement optical spectroscopy performed by FLAMES and VIMOS.

The 4MOST consortium is currently halfway through a Conceptual Design study for ESO with the aim to develop a wide-field ( < 3 square degree, goal < 5 square degree), high-multiplex ( < 1500 fibres, goal 3000 fibres) spectroscopic survey facility for an ESO 4m-class telescope (VISTA). 4MOST will run permanently on the telescope to perform a 5 year public survey yielding more than 20 million spectra at resolution R∼5000 (λ=390–1000 nm) and more than 2 million spectra at R~20,000 (395–456.5 nm and 587–673 nm). The 4MOST design is especially intended to complement three key all-sky, space-based observatories of prime European interest: Gaia, eROSITA and Euclid. Initial design and performance estimates for the wide-field corrector concepts are presented. Two fibre positioner concepts are being considered for 4MOST. The first one is a Phi-Theta system similar to ones used on existing and planned facilities. The second one is a new R-Theta concept with large patrol area. Both positioner concepts effectively address the issues of fibre focus and pupil pointing. The 4MOST spectrographs are fixed configuration two-arm spectrographs, with dedicated spectrographs for the high- and low-resolution fibres. A full facility simulator is being developed to guide trade-off decisions regarding the optimal field-of-view, number of fibres needed, and the relative fraction of high-to-low resolution fibres. The simulator takes mock catalogues with template spectra from Design Reference Surveys as starting point, calculates the output spectra based on a throughput simulator, assigns targets to fibres based on the capabilities of the fibre positioner designs, and calculates the required survey time by tiling the fields on the sky. The 4MOST consortium aims to deliver the full 4MOST facility by the end of 2018 and start delivering high-level data products for both consortium and ESO community targets a year later with yearly increments.

We report here on the current status of SITELLE, an imaging Fourier transform spectrometer to be installed on the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope in 2013. SITELLE is an Integral Field Unit (IFU) spectrograph capable of obtaining the visible (350 nm – 900 nm) spectrum of every pixel of a 2k x 2k CCD imaging a field of view of 11 x 11 arcminutes, with 100% spatial coverage and a spectral resolution ranging from R = 1 (deep panchromatic image) to R < 10⁴ (for gas dynamics). SITELLE will cover a field of view 100 to 1000 times larger than traditional IFUs, such as GMOS-IFU on Gemini or the upcoming MUSE on the VLT. SITELLE follows on the legacy of BEAR, an imaging conversion of the CFHT FTS and the direct successor of SpIOMM, a similar instrument attached to the 1.6-m telescope of the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic in Québec. SITELLE will be used to study the structure and kinematics of HII regions and ejecta around evolved stars in the Milky Way, emission-line stars in clusters, abundances in nearby gas-rich galaxies, and the star formation rate in distant galaxies.

KOALA, the Kilofibre Optimised Astronomical Lenslet Array, is a wide-field, high efficiency integral field unit being designed for use with the bench mounted AAOmega spectrograph on the AAT. KOALA will have 1000 fibres in a rectangular array with a selectable field of view of either 1390 or 430 sq. arcseconds with a spatial sampling of 1.25" or 0.7" respectively. To achieve this KOALA will use a telecentric double lenslet array with interchangeable fore-optics. The IFU will feed AAOmega via a 31m fibre run. The efficiency of KOALA is expected to be ≈ 52% at 3700A and ≈ 66% at 6563°Å with a throughput of > 52% over the entire wavelength range.

The High Efficiency and Resolution Multi Element Spectrograph, HERMES is an optical spectrograph designed primarily for the GALAH, Galactic Archeology Survey, the first major attempt to create a detailed understanding of galaxy formation and evolution by studying the history of our own galaxy, the Milky Way¹. The goal of the GALAH survey is to reconstruct the mass assembly history of the of the Milky way, through a detailed spatially tagged abundance study of one million stars in the Milky Way. The spectrograph will be based at the Anglo Australian Telescope (AAT) and be fed with the existing 2dF robotic fibre positioning system. The spectrograph uses VPH-gratings to achieve a spectral resolving power of 28,000 in standard mode and also provides a high resolution mode ranging between 40,000 to 50,000 using a slit mask. The GALAH survey requires a SNR greater than 100 aiming for a star brightness of V=14. The total spectral coverage of the four channels is about 100nm between 370 and 1000nm for up to 392 simultaneous targets within the 2 degree field of view. Current efforts are focused on manufacturing and integration. The delivery date of spectrograph at the telescope is scheduled for 2013. A performance prediction is presented and a complete overview of the status of the HERMES spectrograph is given. This paper details the following specific topics: The approach to AIT, the manufacturing and integration of the large mechanical frame, the opto-mechanical slit assembly, collimator optics and cameras, VPH gratings, cryostats, fibre cable assembly, instrument control hardware and software, data reduction.

SAMI (Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field spectrograph) has the potential to revolutionise our understanding of galaxies, with spatially-resolved spectroscopy of large numbers of targets. It is the first on-sky application of innovative photonic imaging bundles called hexabundles, which will remove the aperture effects that have biased previous single-fibre multi-object astronomical surveys. The hexabundles have lightly-fused circular multi-mode cores with a covering fraction of 73%. The thirteen hexabundles in SAMI, each have 61 fibre cores, and feed into the AAOmega spectrograph at the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). SAMI was installed at the AAT in July 2011 and the first commissioning results prove the effectiveness of hexabundles on sky. A galaxy survey of several thousand galaxies to z 0.1 will begin with SAMI in mid-2012.

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) project has been endorsed by Japanese community as one of the main future instruments of the Subaru 8.2-meter telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. This optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph targets cosmology with galaxy surveys, Galactic archaeology, and studies of galaxy/AGN evolution. Taking advantage of Subaru’s wide field of view, which is further extended with the recently completed Wide Field Corrector, PFS will enable us to carry out multi-fiber spectroscopy of 2400 targets within 1.3 degree diameter. A microlens is attached at each fiber entrance for F-ratio transformation into a larger one so that difficulties of spectrograph design are eased. Fibers are accurately placed onto target positions by positioners, each of which consists of two stages of piezo-electric rotary motors, through iterations by using back-illuminated fiber position measurements with a widefield metrology camera. Fibers then carry light to a set of four identical fast-Schmidt spectrographs with three color arms each: the wavelength ranges from 0.38 μm to 1.3 μm will be simultaneously observed with an average resolving power of 3000. Before and during the era of extremely large telescopes, PFS will provide the unique capability of obtaining spectra of 2400 cosmological/astrophysical targets simultaneously with an 8-10 meter class telescope. The PFS collaboration, led by IPMU, consists of USP/LNA in Brazil, Caltech/JPL, Princeton, and JHU in USA, LAM in France, ASIAA in Taiwan, and NAOJ/Subaru.

Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is an 870 Mega pixel prime focus camera for the 8.2 m Subaru telescope. The wide field corrector delivers sharp image of 0.25 arc-sec FWHM in r-band over the entire 1.5 degree (in diameter) field of view. The collimation of the camera with respect to the optical axis of the primary mirror is realized by hexapod actuators whose mechanical accuracy is few microns. As a result, we expect to have seeing limited image most of the time. Expected median seeing is 0.67 arc-sec FWHM in i-band. The sensor is a p-ch fully depleted CCD of 200 micron thickness (2048 x 4096 15 μm square pixel) and we employ 116 of them to pave the 50 cm focal plane. Minimum interval between exposures is roughly 30 seconds including reading out arrays, transferring data to the control computer and saving them to the hard drive. HSC uniquely features the combination of large primary mirror, wide field of view, sharp image and high sensitivity especially in red. This enables accurate shape measurement of faint galaxies which is critical for planned weak lensing survey to probe the nature of dark energy. The system is being assembled now and will see the first light in August 2012.

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.

The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration has completed construction of the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), a 3 square degree, 570 Megapixel CCD camera which will be mounted on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at CTIO. DECam will be used to perform the 5000 sq. deg. Dark Energy Survey with 30% of the telescope time over a 5 year period. During the remainder of the time, and after the survey, DECam will be available as a community instrument. All components of DECam have been shipped to Chile and post-shipping checkout finished in Jan. 2012. Installation is in progress. A summary of lessons learned and an update of the performance of DECam and the status of the DECam installation and commissioning will be presented.

The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) is a new facility instrument being developed for the W. M. Keck Observatory and funded for construction by the Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP) of the National Science Foundation (NSF). KCWI is a bench-mounted spectrograph for the Keck II right Nasmyth focal station, providing integral field spectroscopy over a seeing-limited field up to 20"x33" in extent. Selectable Volume Phase Holographic (VPH) gratings provide high efficiency and spectral resolution in the range of 1000 to 20000. The dual-beam design of KCWI passed a Preliminary Design Review in summer 2011. The detailed design of the KCWI blue channel (350 to 700 nm) is now nearly complete, with the red channel (530 to 1050 nm) planned for a phased implementation contingent upon additional funding. KCWI builds on the experience of the Caltech team in implementing the Cosmic Web Imager (CWI), in operation since 2009 at Palomar Observatory. KCWI adds considerable flexibility to the CWI design, and will take full advantage of the excellent seeing and dark sky above Mauna Kea with a selectable nod-and-shuffle observing mode. In this paper, models of the expected KCWI sensitivity and background subtraction capability are presented, along with a detailed description of the instrument design. The KCWI team is lead by Caltech (project management, design and implementation) in partnership with the University of California at Santa Cruz (camera optical and mechanical design) and the W. M. Keck Observatory (program oversight and observatory interfaces).

A Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (FOSC) is designed for the upcoming 360-cm optical telescope at Devasthal. The design is based on other available similar instruments, having a collimator and camera unit. The instrument converts F/9 beam from the telescope to a nearly F/4.3 beam. The collimator and camera optics have 7 and 5 elements respectively with one aspheric component. The low dispersion glasses such as CaF2 and PBM/PBL/FSL are used in order to minimize the chromatic aberrations. These glasses also have very good transmission near blue wavelengths. The imaging is possible both in narrow and broad band filters up to the field of view of ~ 14' x 14' or 19' along the diagonal. The spectroscopy can be performed in the wavelength range 350 - 900 nm with several choices of grisms and slits with resolution in the range of 250 - 2000. The theoretical spot sizes in the imaging mode are expected in the range 0:04" - 0:11". The overall transmission of the camera and collimator optics is expected as ~ 75% at 350 nm and > 95% at wavelengths above 400 nm. The total weight of the instrument as designed is around 350 kg. The instrument is currently planned to be assembled in the Institute laboratory and to be commissioned on the 360-cm telescope in October 2013. The design methodology, techniques, and expected performance of the optics are presented here.

FORCAST has completed 16 engineering and science flights as the “First Light” U. S. science instrument aboard SOFIA and will be commissioned as a SOFIA facility instrument in 2013. FORCAST offers dual channel imaging (diffractionlimited at wavelengths < 15 microns) using a 256 x 256 pixel Si:As blocked impurity band (BIB) detector at 5 - 28 microns and a 256 x 256 pixel Si:Sb BIB detector at 28 - 40 microns. FORCAST images a 3.4 arcmin × 3.2 arcmin fieldof- view on SOFIA with a rectified plate scale of 0.768 arcsec/pixel. In addition to imaging capability, FORCAST offers a facility mode for grism spectroscopy that will commence during SOFIA Cycle 1. The grism suite enables spectroscopy over nearly the entire FORCAST wavelength range at low resolution (~140 - 300). Optional cross-dispersers boost the spectroscopic resolution to ~1200 at 5 - 8 microns and ~800 at 9.8 – 13.7 microns. Here we describe the FORCAST instrument including observing modes for SOFIA Cycle 1. We also summarize in-flight results, including detector and optical performance, sensitivity performance, and calibration.

FIFI-LS (Field-Imaging Far-Infrared Line Spectrometer) is an imaging spectrograph for SOFIA comprised of two medium resolution (R~2200) grating spectrometers feeding two 16x25 pixel detector arrays, which enable simultaneous line observations across two wavelength ranges (42-110 μm and 110-210μm) each across a field of view of 5x5 pixel. FIFI-LS will be the extragalactic spectroscopic workhorse for SOFIA. FIFI-LS has enough sensitivity to observe a substantial sample of nearby galaxies. It also has the right combination of wavelength range and spatial resolution to carry out unique new observations beyond those possible with Herschel, Spitzer, ISO and IRAS. As the effective sensitivity of FIFI-LS is only about a factor of 3-5 lower than the PACS spectrometer onboard Herschel, mainly due to an enhanced multiplexing advantage, FIFI-LS will build upon recent exciting scientific results and spearhead the post- Herschel far-infrared era. FIFI-LS is scheduled for commissioning onboard SOFIA in early 2014. An account on the instrument and its current stratus will be presented.

HIPO is a special purpose science instrument for SOFIA that was also designed to be used for Observatory test work. It was used in a series of flights from June to December 2011 as part of the SOFIA Characterization and Integration (SCAI) flight test program. Partial commissioning of HIPO and the co-mounted HIPO-FLITECAM (FLIPO) configuration were included within the scope of the SCAI work. The commissioning measurements included such things as optical throughput, image size and shape as a function of wavelength and exposure time, image motion assessment over a wide frequency range, scintillation noise, photometric stability assessment, twilight sky brightness, cosmic ray rate as a function of altitude, telescope pointing control, secondary mirror control, and GPS time and position performance. As part of this work we successfully observed a stellar occultation by Pluto, our first SOFIA science data. We report here on the observed in-flight performance of HIPO both when mounted alone and when used in the FLIPO configuration.

This paper describes the current status of FLITECAM, the near-infrared (1 - 5 μm) camera and spectrometer for NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). Due to a change in schedule FLITECAM’s delivery was advanced, allowing it to be co-mounted with the HIPO instrument and used on four flights in October 2011 for observatory verification. Although not part of FLITECAM’s commissioning time, some preliminary performance characteristics were determined. Image size as a function of wavelength was measured prior to the installation of active mass dampers on the telescope. Preliminary grism spectroscopy was also obtained. In addition, FLITECAM was used to measure the emissivity of the telescope and warm optics in the co-mounted configuration. New narrow band filters were added to the instrument, including a Paschen alpha filter for line emission. Results are illustrated.

The Echelon-Cross-Echelle Spectrograph (EXES) is one of the first generation instruments for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). The primary goal of EXES is to provide high-resolution, cross-dispersed spectroscopy, with resolutions of 50,000-100,000 and wavelength coverage of 0.5-1.5% between 4.5 μm and 28.3 μm. EXES will also have medium (R=5000-25000) and low (R=1500-4000) modes available, as well as a target acquisition imaging mode and a pupil-imaging mode for alignment testing. EXES is scheduled for commissioning flights in February 2014. It will be available to the public for shared-risk observations in SOFIA’s Cycle 2. Here we give an overview of the design and capabilities of EXES as well as its laboratory performance to date.

The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) is a 4 meter class telescope for observation of the solar atmosphere currently in the construction phase. The Visible Broadband Imager (VBI) is a diffraction limited imaging instrument planned to be the first-light instrument in the ATST instrumentation suite. The VBI is composed of two branches, the "VBI blue" and the "VBI red", and uses state-of-the-art narrow bandwidth interference filters and two custom designed high speed filter wheels to take bursts of images that will be re-constructed using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) optimized near-real-time speckle image reconstruction engine. At first light, the VBI instrument will produce diffraction-limited movies of solar activity at eight discrete wavelengths with a field of view of 2 arc minutes square. In this contribution, the VBI design team will discuss the capabilities of the VBI and describe the design of the instrument, highlighting the unique challenges faced in the development of this unique instrument.

We developed a new universal spectropolarimeter on the Domeless Solar Telescope at Hida Observatory to realize precise spectropolarimetric observations in a wide range of wavelength in visible and near infrared. The system aims to open a new window of plasma diagnostics by using Zeeman effect, Hanle effect, Stark effect, and impact polarization to measure the external magnetic field, electric field, and anisotropies in atomic excitation in solar atmosphere. The polarimeter consists of a 60 cm aperture vacuum telescope, a high dispersion vacuum spectrograph, polarization modulator and analyser composed of a continuously rotating waveplate whose retardation is constant in 400 - 1100 nm and Wallaston prisms located closely behind the focus of the telescope, and a fast and high sensitive CCD camera or a infrared camera. The duration for this polarimeter's achieving photometric accuracy of 10^-3 is 30 - 60 s. Instrumental polarization of the telescope is calibrated by using a remotely controllable turret accommodating linear polarizer attached at the entrance window of the telescope to induce well known polarized light into the telescope. Thus a Mueller matrix model of the telescope is established to compensate the instrumental polarization included in observed data within the required accuracy.

The SpectroPolarimetric Imager for the Energetic Sun (SPIES) is a project to develop a new class of spectropolarimetric instrument for the study of highly dynamic solar phenomena. Understanding the physics of dynamic solar phenomena requires detailed information about the magnetic, thermal, and dynamic properties of the solar atmosphere at every stage of their evolution. Although these properties can be obtained with existing highperformance spectropolarimeters such as the SpectroPolarimeter onboard the Hinode space solar observatory or the Facility IR Spectropolarimeter of the Dunn Solar Telescope, these instruments cannot observe the required field of view with temporal resolution that can resolve the dynamic timescale of these energetic events. SPIES-2K is an experimental true-imaging spectropolarimeter developed under this program to address this deficiency in our observing capability. It is based on a fiber-optic integral field unit containing 2,048 standard multimode fused silica fibers, and is capable of observing a 64 x 32 pixels field simultaneously with high spatial and spectral resolution. Moreover, it can obtain the full Stokes spectra of the field with a maximum temporal resolution of a few seconds. This paper presents the design and characteristics of the instrument, as well as preliminary results obtained at Fe I 1565 nm wavelength. Additionally, this paper also reports on recent studies of the polarization maintenance optical fiber ribbon constructed from rectangular element fibers for the Birefringence Fiber-Optic Image Slicer, and discusses its application to future generation of SPIES and other astronomical spectropolarimetry projects.

We present plans for instrumentation on the European Extremely Large Telescope. ESO is working with its community of astronomers and instrument builders to develop the E-ELT Instrumentation Roadmap. The roadmap is a timeline of the steps towards the full instrument programme, from specification of the scientific requirements, via a technology development phase, to selection of the instrument concepts. Key goals are to be flexibile to new ideas and to ensure the timely, on-budget delivery of instruments that meet the community's scientific needs. The result is an exciting programme of seven instruments planned over the first decade of the telescope construction phase.

An overview of the current status of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) instrumentation program is presented. Science cases and operational concepts as well as their links to the instruments are continually revisited and updated through a series of workshops and conferences. Work on the three first-light instruments (WFOS IRIS, and IRMS) has made significant progress, and many groups in TMT partner communities are developing future instrument concepts. Other instrument-related subsystems are also receiving considerable attention given their importance to the scientific end-to-end performance of the Observatory. As an example, we describe aspects of the facility instrument cooling system that are crucially important to successful diffraction-limited observations on an extremely large telescope.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a 25.4-m optical/infrared telescope constructed from seven 8.4-m primary mirror segments. The collecting area is equivalent to a 21.6-m filled aperture. The instrument development program was formalized about two years ago with the initiation of 14-month conceptual design studies for six candidate instruments. These studies were completed at the end of 2011 with a design review for each. In addition, a feasibility study was performed for a fiber-feed facility that will direct the light from targets distributed across GMT's full 20 arcmin field of view simultaneously to three spectrographs. We briefly describe the features and science goals for these instruments, and the process used to select those instruments that will be funded for fabrication first. Detailed reports for most of these instruments are presented separately at this meeting.

The GMT-CfA, Carnegie, Catolica, Chicago Large Earth Finder (G-CLEF) is a fiber fed, optical echelle spectrograph that has undergone conceptual design for consideration as a first light instrument at the Giant Magellan Telescope. GCLEF has been designed to be a general-purpose echelle spectrograph with precision radial velocity (PRV) capability. We have defined the performance envelope of G-CLEF to address several of the highest science priorities in the Decadal Survey¹. The spectrograph optical design is an asymmetric, two-arm, white pupil design. The asymmetric white pupil design is adopted to minimize the size of the refractive camera lenses. The spectrograph beam is nominally 300 mm, reduced to 200 mm after dispersion by the R4 echelle grating. The peak efficiency of the spectrograph is >35% and the passband is 3500-9500Å. The spectrograph is primarily fed with three sets of fibers to enable three observing modes: High-Throughput, Precision-Abundance and PRV. The respective resolving powers of these modes are R~ 25,000, 40,000 and 120,000. We also anticipate having an R~40,000 Multi-object Spectroscopy mode with a multiplex of ~40 fibers. In PRV mode, each of the seven 8.4m GMT primary mirror sub-apertures feeds an individual fiber, which is scrambled after pupil-slicing. The goal radial velocity precision of G-CLEF is ∂V <10 cm/sec radial. In this paper, we provide a flowdown from fiducial science programs to design parameters. We discuss the optomechanical, electrical, structural and thermal design and present a roadmap to first light at the GMT.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) Integral-Field Spectrograph (GMTIFS)^c is one of six potential first-light instruments for the 25m-diameter Giant Magellan Telescope. The Australian National University has completed a Conceptual Design Study for GMTIFS. The science cases for GMTIFS are summarized, and the instrument capabilities and design challenges are described. GMTIFS will be the work-horse adaptive-optics instrument for GMT. It contains an integral-field spectrograph (IFS) and Imager accessing the science field, and an On-Instrument Wave-Front Sensor (OIWFS) that patrols the 90 arcsec radius guide field. GMTIFS will address a wide range of science from epoch of reionization studies to forming galaxies at high redshifts and star and planet formation in our Galaxy. It will fully exploit the Laser Tomography Adaptive Optics (LTAO) system on the telescope. The tight image quality and positioning stability requirements that this imposes drive the design complexity. Some cryogenic mechanisms in the IFS must set to ~ 1 μm precision. The Beam-Steering mechanism in the OIWFS must set to milli-arcsecond precision over the guide field, corresponding to ~ 1 μm precision in the f/8 focal plane. Differential atmospheric dispersion must also be corrected to milli-arcsecond precision. Conceptual design solutions addressing these and other issues are presented and discussed.

The EAGLE instrument is a Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO) fed, multiple Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS), working in the Near Infra-Red (NIR), on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). A Phase A design study was delivered to the European Southern Observatory (ESO) leading to a successful review in October 2009. Since that time there have been a number of developments, which we summarize here. Some of these developments are also described in more detail in other submissions at this meeting. The science case for the instrument, while broad, highlighted in particular: understanding the stellar populations of galaxies in the nearby universe, the observation of the evolution of galaxies during the period of rapid stellar build-up between redshifts of 2-5, and the search for 'first light' in the universe at redshifts beyond 7. In the last 2 years substantial progress has been made in these areas, and we have updated our science case to show that EAGLE is still an essential facility for the E-ELT. This in turn allowed us to revisit the science requirements for the instrument, confirming most of the original decisions, but with one modification. The original location considered for the instrument (a gravity invariant focal station) is no longer in the E-ELT Construction Proposal, and so we have performed some preliminary analyses to show that the instrument can be simply adapted to work at the E-ELT Nasmyth platform. Since the delivery of the Phase A documentation, MOAO has been demonstrated on-sky by the CANARY experiment at the William Herschel Telescope.

Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will see the first light in 2019. We propose Second-Earth Imager for TMT (SEIT) as a future instrument of TMT. The central science case of SEIT is direct imaging and characterization of habitable planets around nearby late-type stars. Focusing on simultaneous spectroscopy of the central star and the planet, SEIT allows us to remove an impact from the telluric absorption and then reveal the presence of oxygen molecules on the Earth-like planets. In order to achieve such a science goal, an extreme AO, a coronagraph, and a post-process technique for achieving high contrast at the small inner working angle are key components. The combination of a shearing nulling interferometer and a pupil remapping interferometer is applied to the first SEIT concept. The shearing nulling interferometer suppresses the diffracted starlight after the extreme AO wavefront correction, and then the pupil remapping interferometer tackles the speckle noise from starlight. Focusing on a fact that the pupil remapping interferometer has difficulty reconstructing the wavefront from only the speckle noise, we found an unbalnced nulling technique enhances the performance of the pupil remapping interferometer. We performed a numerical simulation to validate this concept and found this concept achieves the 5-sigma detection contrast down to 8x10^-8 at 10 mas for 5 hours. Thus, the SEIT concept detects habitable planets with a radius two times that of the Earth around ten nearby M stars.

HARMONI is a visible and near-IR integral field spectrograph, providing the E-ELT's spectroscopic capability at first light. It obtains simultaneous spectra of 32000 spaxels, at a range of resolving powers from R~4000 to R~20000, covering the wavelength range from 0.47 to 2.45 μm. The 256 × 128 spaxel field of view has four different plate scales, with the coarsest scale (40 mas) providing a 5″ × 10″ FoV, while the finest scale is a factor of 10 finer (4mas). We describe the opto-mechanical design of HARMONI, prior to the start of preliminary design, including the main subsystems - namely the image de-rotator, the scale-changing optics, the splitting and slicing optics, and the spectrographs. We also present the secondary guiding system, the pupil imaging optics, the field and pupil stops, the natural guide star wavefront sensor, and the calibration unit.

The ‘Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph’ (METIS) will be the third instrument on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). METIS will provide diffraction limited imaging in the atmospheric L/M and N-band from 3 to 14 μm over an 18˝×18˝ field of view, as well as high contrast coronagraphy, medium-resolution (R ≤ 5000) long slit spectroscopy, and polarimetry. In addition, an integral field spectrograph will provide a spectral resolution of R ~ 100,000 at L/M band. Focusing on highest angular resolution and high spectral resolution, METIS will deliver unique science, in particular in the areas of exo-planets, proto-planetary-disks and high-redshift galaxies, which are illustrated in this paper. The reduction of the E-ELT aperture size had little impact on the METIS science case. With the recent positive developments in the area of detectors, the METIS instrument concept has reached a high level of technology readiness. For some key components (cryogenic chopping mirror, immersed grating, sorption cooler and cryogenic derotator) a development and test program has been launched successfully.

We present a conceptual design for a moderate resolution optical spectrograph for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). The spectrograph is designed to make use of the large field-of-view of the GMT and be suitable for observations of very faint objects across a wide range of optical wavelengths. We show some details of the optical and mechanical design of the instrument.

NIRMOS (Near-Infrared Multiple Object Spectrograph) is a 0.9 to 2.5 μm imager/spectrograph concept proposed for the Giant Magellan Telescope¹ (GMT). Near-infrared observations will play a central role in the ELT era, allowing us to trace the birth and evolution of galaxies through the era of peak star formation. NIRMOS' large field of view, 6.5′ by 6.5′, will be unique among imaging spectrographs developed for ELTs. NIRMOS will operate in Las Campanas' superb natural seeing and is also designed to take advantage of GMT's ground-layer adaptive optics system. We describe NIRMOS' high-performance optical and mechanical design.

The Thermal Infrared imager for the GMT which provides Extreme contrast and Resolution (TIGER) is intended as a small-scale, targeted instrument capable of detecting and characterizing exoplanets and circumstellar disks, around both young systems in formation, and more mature systems in the solar neighborhood. TIGER can also provide general purpose infrared imaging at wavelengths from 1.5-14 μm. The instrument will utilize the facility adaptive optics (AO) system. With its operation at NIR to MIR wavelengths (where good image quality is easier to achieve), and much of the high-impact science using modestly bright guide stars, the instrument can be used early in the operation of the GMT. The TIGER concept is a dual channel imager and low resolution spectrometer, with high contrast modes of observations to fulfill the above science goals. A long wavelength channel (LWC) will cover 7-14 μm wavelength, while a short wavelength channel (SWC) will cover the 1.5-5 μm wavelength region. Both channels will have a 30° FOV. In addition to imaging, low-resolution spectroscopy (R=300) is possible with TIGER for both the SWC and LWC, using insertable grisms.

ESPRESSO, the VLT rocky exoplanets hunter, will combine the efficiency of modern echelle spectrograph with extreme radial-velocity precision. It will be installed at Paranal on ESO's VLT in order to achieve a gain of two magnitudes with respect to its predecessor HARPS, and the instrumental radial-velocity precision will be improved to reach 10 cm/s level. We have constituted a Consortium of astronomical research institutes to fund, design and build ESPRESSO on behalf of and in collaboration with ESO, the European Southern Observatory. The project has passed the preliminary design review in November 2011. The spectrograph will be installed at the so-called "Combined Coudé Laboratory" of the VLT, it will be linked to the four 8.2 meters Unit Telescopes (UT) through four optical "Coudé trains" and will be operated either with a single telescope or with up to four UTs. In exchange of the major financial and human effort the building Consortium will be awarded with guaranteed observing time (GTO), which will be invested in a common scientific program. Thanks to its characteristics and the ability of combining incoherently the light of 4 large telescopes, ESPRESSO will offer new possibilities in many fields of astronomy. Our main scientific objectives are, however, the search and characterization of rocky exoplanets in the habitable zone of quiet, near-by G to M-dwarfs, and the analysis of the variability of fundamental physical constants. In this paper, we present the ambitious scientific objectives, the capabilities of ESPRESSO, the technical solutions for the system and its subsystems, enlightening the main differences between ESPRESSO and its predecessors. The project aspects of this facility are also described, from the consortium and partnership structure to the planning phases and milestones.

We present the scientific motivation and conceptual design for the recently funded Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF), a stabilized fiber-fed near-infrared (NIR) spectrograph for the 10 meter class Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) that will be capable of discovering low mass planets around M dwarfs. The HPF will cover the NIR Y and J bands to enable precise radial velocities to be obtained on mid M dwarfs, and enable the detection of low mass planets around these stars. The conceptual design is comprised of a cryostat cooled to 200K, a dual fiber-feed with a science and calibration fiber, a gold coated mosaic echelle grating, and a Teledyne Hawaii-2RG (H2RG) *NIR detector with a 1.7μm cutoff. A uranium-neon hollow-cathode lamp is the baseline wavelength calibration source, and we are actively testing laser frequency combs to enable even higher radial velocity precision. We will present the overall instrument system design and integration with the HET, and discuss major system challenges, key choices, and ongoing research and development projects to mitigate risk. We also discuss the ongoing process of target selection for the HPF survey.

IRD is the near-infrared high-precision radial velocity instrument for the Subaru 8.2-m telescope. It is a relatively compact (~1m size) spectrometer with a new echelle-grating and Volume-Phase Holographic gratings covering 1-2 micron wavelengths combined with an original frequency comb using optical pulse synthesizer. The spectrometer will employ a 4096x4096-pixel HgCdTe array under testing at IfA, University of Hawaii. Both the telescope/Adaptive Optics and comb beams are fed to the spectrometer via optical fibers, while the instrument is placed at the Nasmyth platform of the Subaru telescope. Expected accuracy of the Doppler-shifted velocity measurements is about 1 m s^-1. Helped with the large collecting area and high image quality of the Subaru telescope, IRD can conduct systematic radial velocity surveys of nearby middle-to-late M stars aiming for down to one Earth-mass planet. Systematic observational and theoretical studies of M stars and their planets for the IRD science are also ongoing. We will report the design and preliminary development progresses of the whole and each component of IRD.

The Gemini Planet Imager is a next-generation instrument for the direct detection and characterization of young warm exoplanets, designed to be an order of magnitude more sensitive than existing facilities. It combines a 1700-actuator adaptive optics system, an apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraph, a precision interferometric infrared wavefront sensor, and a integral field spectrograph. All hardware and software subsystems are now complete and undergoing integration and test at UC Santa Cruz. We will present test results on each subsystem and the results of end-to-end testing. In laboratory testing, GPI has achieved a raw contrast (without post-processing) of 10^-6 5σ at 0.4”, and with multiwavelength speckle suppression, 2x10^-7 at the same separation.

The Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG)[9] hosts, starting in April 2012, the visible spectrograph HARPS-N. It is based on the design of its predecessor working at ESO's 3.6m telescope, achieving unprecedented results on radial velocity measurements of extrasolar planetary systems. The spectrograph's ultra-stable environment, in a temperature-controlled vacuum chamber, will allow measurements under 1 m/s which will enable the characterization of rocky, Earth-like planets. Enhancements from the original HARPS include better scrambling using octagonal section fibers with a shorter length, as well as a native tip-tilt system to increase image sharpness, and an integrated pipeline providing a complete set of parameters. Observations in the Kepler field will be the main goal of HARPS-N, and a substantial fraction of TNG observing time will be devoted to this follow-up. The operation process of the observatory has been updated, from scheduling constraints to telescope control system. Here we describe the entire instrument, along with the results from the first technical commissioning.

The laser frequency comb, with its extreme precision, opens a new window for high precision spectroscopy for current facilities, as well as for the ELT's. We report on the latest performance of the laser frequency comb obtained in combination with the HARPS spectrograph, which allowed calibration with cm/sec repeatability. The laser frequency comb system developed is described. Details of its laboratory set-up, characterization and integration with HARPS are shown. The results of the recent test campaigns are presented, showing excellent performance in terms of repeatability as well as wavelength coverage. Preliminary on sky data and next activities to integrate such a system in HARPS are presented.

We propose a dual-beam polarimetry differential imaging test system that can be used for the direct imaging of the exoplanets. The system is composed of a liquid crystal variable retarder (LCVR) in the pupil to switch between two orthogonal polarized states, and a Wollaston prism (WP) that will be inserted before the final focal focus of the system to create two polarized images for the differential subtraction. Such a system can work separately or be integrated in the coronagraph system to enhance the high-contrast imaging. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system, here we show the initial test result both with and without integrating our developed coronagraph. A unique feature for this system is that each channel can subtract with itself by using the retarder to rotate the planet's polarization orientation, which has the best performance according to our lab test results. Finally, it is shown that the polarimetry differential imaging system is a promising technique and can be used for the direct imaging observation of reflected lights from the exoplanets.

We present on-sky results obtained with the visible light prototype of the Fibered Imager foR Single Telescope (FIRST) mounted on the 3-m Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory and using its Adaptive Optics system. This instrument is dedicated to high angular resolution and high dynamic range imaging. Its principle combines both techniques of single-mode fiber interferometry and pupil remapping. Simulations predict a dynamic range up to 10⁶ at /D, or at a few tens of milliarcseconds at 630nm using an 8-m telescope. Laboratory experiments based on a 9-fiber prototype working in the 600nm–900nm spectral band successfully demonstrated the power of the concept. The same prototype has been set-up on the 3-m Shane telescope in July 2010. In this paper, we present the on-sky results obtained in October 2011 with an improved version of the instrument using 18 fibers. They clearly show the detection of the binary star Capella at the diffraction limit of the telescope.λ

The Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) is the next-generation instrument planned for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF)¹. It is an AO assisted instrument that will make use of the Deformable Secondary Mirror and the new Laser Guide Star Facility (4LGSF), and it is designed for the Cassegrain focus of the telescope UT4. The project just concluded its conceptual design phase and is awaiting formal approval to continue to the next phase. ERIS will offer 1-5 μm imaging and 1-2.5 μm integral field spectroscopic capabilities with high Strehl performance. As such it will replace, with much improved single conjugated AO correction, the most scientifically important and popular observing capabilities currently offered by NACO² (diffraction limited imaging in JM band, Sparse Aperture Masking and APP coronagraphy) and by SINFONI³, whose instrumental module, SPIFFI, will be re-used in ERIS. The Cassegrain location and the performance requirements impose challenging demands on the project, from opto-mechanical design to cryogenics to the operational concept. In this paper we describe the baseline design proposed for ERIS and discuss these technical challenges, with particular emphasis on the trade-offs and the novel solutions proposed for building ERIS.

The highest resolution images ever taken in the visible were obtained by combining Lucky Imaging and low order adaptive optics. This paper describes a new instrument to be deployed on the WHT 4.2m and GTC 10.4 m telescopes on La Palma, with particular emphasis on the optical design and the expected system performance. A new design of low order wavefront sensor using photon counting CCD detectors and multi-plane curvature wavefront sensor will allow dramatically fainter reference stars to be used, allowing virtually full sky coverage with a natural guide star. This paper also describes a significant improvements in the efficiency of Lucky Imaging, important advances in wavefront reconstruction with curvature sensors and the results of simulations and sensitivity limits. With a 2 x 2 array of 1024 x 1024 photon counting EMCCDs, AOLI is likely to be the first of the new class of high sensitivity, near diffraction limited imaging systems giving higher resolution in the visible from the ground than hitherto been possible from space.

When commissioned in November 2008 at the Palomar 200 inch Hale Telescope, the Oxford SWIFT I and z band integral field spectrograph, fed by the adaptive optics system PALAO, provided a wide (3×) range of spatial resolutions: three plate scales of 235 mas, 160 mas, and 80 mas per spaxel over a contiguous field-of-view of 89×44 pixels. Depending on observing conditions and guide star brightness we can choose a seeing limited scale of 235 mas per spaxel, or 160 mas and 80 mas per spaxel for very bright guide star AO with substantial increase of enclosed energy. Over the last two years PALAO was upgraded to PALM-3000: an extreme, high-order adaptive optics system with two deformable mirrors with more than 3000 actuators, promising diffraction limited performance in SWIFT's wavelength range. In order to take advantage of this increased spatial resolution we upgraded SWIFT with new pre-optics allowing us to spatially Nyquist sample the diffraction limited PALM-3000 point spread function with 16 mas resolution, reducing the spaxel scale by another factor of 5×. We designed, manufactured, integrated and tested the new pre-optics in the first half of 2011 and commissioned it in December 2011. Here we present the opto-mechanical design and assembly of the new scale changing optics, as well as laboratory and on-sky commissioning results. In optimal observing conditions we achieve substantial Strehl ratios, delivering the near diffraction limited spatial resolution in the I and z bands.

As telescopes get larger, the size of a seeing-limited spectrograph for a given resolving power becomes larger also, and for ELTs the size will be so great that high resolution instruments of simple design will be infeasible. Solutions include adaptive optics (but not providing full correction for short wavelengths) or image slicers (which give feasible but still large instruments). Here we develop the solution proposed by Bland-Hawthorn and Horton: the use of diffraction-limited spectrographs which are compact even for high resolving power. Their use is made possible by the photonic lantern, which splits a multi-mode optical fiber into a number of single-mode fibers. We describe preliminary designs for such spectrographs, at a resolving power of R ~ 50,000. While they are small and use relatively simple optics, the challenges are to accommodate the longest possible fiber slit (hence maximum number of single-mode fibers in one spectrograph) and to accept the beam from each fiber at a focal ratio considerably faster than for most spectrograph collimators, while maintaining diffraction-limited imaging quality. It is possible to obtain excellent performance despite these challenges. We also briefly consider the number of such spectrographs required, which can be reduced by full or partial adaptive optics correction, and/or moving towards longer wavelengths.

FRIDA (inFRared Imager and Dissector for the Adaptive optics system of the Gran Telescopio Canarias) is designed as a diffraction limited instrument that will offer broad and narrow band imaging and integral field spectroscopy capabilities with low (R ~ 1,500), intermediate (R ~ 4,500) and high (R ~ 30,000) spectral resolutions to operate in the wavelength range 0.9 - 2.5 μm. The integral field unit is based on a monolithic image slicer. The imaging and IFS observing modes will use the same Teledyne 2K x 2K detector. FRIDA will be based at the Nasmyth B platform of GTC, behind the AO system. The key scientific objectives of the instrument include studies of solar system bodies, low mass objects, circumstellar outflow phenomena in advanced stages of stellar evolution, active galactic nuclei, high redshift galaxies, resolved stellar populations, semi-detached binary systems, young stellar objects and star forming environments. FRIDA is a collaborative project between the main GTC partners, namely, Spain, México and Florida. In this paper, we present the status of the instrument design as it is currently being prepared for its manufacture, after an intensive prototypes' phase and design optimization. The CDR was held in September 2011.

X-shooter is one of the most popular instruments at the VLT, offering instantaneous spectroscopy from 300 to 2500 nm. We present the design of a single polarimetric unit at the polarization-free Cassegrain focus that serves all three spectrograph arms of X-shooter. It consists of a calcite Savart plate as a polarizing beam-splitter and a rotatable crystal retarder stack as a "polychromatic modulator". Since even “superachromatic" wave plates have a wavelength range that is too limited for X-shooter, this novel modulator is designed to offer close-to-optimal polarimetric efficiencies for all Stokes parameters at all wavelengths. We analyze the modulator design in terms of its polarimetric performance, its temperature sensitivity, and its polarized fringes. Furthermore, we present the optical design of the polarimetric unit. The X-shooter polarimeter will furnish a myriad of science cases: from measuring stellar magnetic fields (e.g., Ap stars, white dwarfs, massive stars) to determining asymmetric structures around young stars and in supernova explosions.

We present a summary of the concept design report of a new astronomical instrument: SPARC4, Simultaneous Polarimeter and Rapid Camera in 4 bands. SPARC4 will provide photometry and polarimetry in four optical broad bands (griz SDSS) simultaneously. This is achieved by the use of dichroic beam splitters. The square eld of view is around 5.6 arcmin on a side. SPARC4 time resolution is sub-second for photometry and somewhat longer for polarimetry. This is provided by the use of fast EMCCDs. The main motivation for building SPARC4 is to explore astrophysical objects which exhibit fast temporal variability in ux and polarization. The instrument will be installed at the 1.6-m telescope of the Observatorio do Pico dos Dias (Brazil).

The f/5 instrumentation suite for the Clay telescope was developed to provide the Magellan Consortium observer community with wide field optical imaging and multislit NIR spectroscopy capability. The instrument suite consists of several major subsystems including two focal plane instruments. These instruments are Megacam and MMIRS. Megacam is a panoramic, square format CCD mosaic imager, 0.4° on a side. It is instrumented with a full set of Sloan filters. MMIRS is a multislit NIR spectrograph that operates in Y through K band and has long slit and imaging capability as well. These two instruments can operate both at Magellan and the MMT. Megacam requires a wide field refractive corrector and a Topbox to support shutter and filter selection functions, as well as to perform wavefront sensing for primary mirror figure correction. Both the corrector and Topbox designs were modeled on previous designs for MMT, however features of the Magellan telescope required considerable revision of these designs. In this paper we discuss the optomechanical, electrical, software and structural design of these subsystems, as well as operational considerations that attended delivery of the instrument suite to first light.

The Gemini High-Resolution Optical SpecTrograph (GHOST) will fill an important gap in the current suite of Gemini instruments. We will describe the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO)-led concept for GHOST, which consists of a multi-object, compact, high-efficiency, fixed-format, fiber-fed design. The spectrograph itself is a four-arm variant of the asymmetric white-pupil echelle Kiwispec spectrograph, Kiwisped, produced by Industrial Research Ltd. This spectrograph has an R4 grating and a 100mm pupil, and separate cross-disperser and camera optics for each of the four arms, carefully optimized for their respective wavelength ranges. We feed this spectrograph with a miniature lensletbased IFU that sub-samples the seeing disk of a single object into 7 hexagonal sub-images, reformatting this into a slit with a second set of double microlenses at the spectrograph entrance with relatively little loss due to focal-ratio degradation. This reformatting enables high spectral resolution from a compact design that fits well within the relatively tight GHOST budget. We will describe our baseline 2-object R~50,000 design with full wavelength coverage from the ultraviolet to the silicon cutoff, as well as the high-resolution single-object R~75,000 mode.

The Gemini Remote Access CFHT ESPaDOnS Spectrograph (GRACES) is an innovative instrumentation experiment that will demonstrate if ESPaDOnS, a bench-mounted high-resolution optical spectrograph at CFHT, can be fed by a 270-m long fiber from the Gemini-North telescope with low enough losses to remain competitive with conventional spectrographs on other 8 to 10-m telescopes. Detailed simulations have shown that GRACES should be more sensitive than the HIRES spectrograph at Keck Observatory at wavelengths longer than about 600-700 nm. This result is possible by using FPB-type of optical fibers made by Polymicro Technologies and by keeping the critical focal ratio degradation (FRD) losses to less than 10%. Laboratory tests on these FPB optical fibers are underway and show that for 36-m lengths that the FRD losses are as low as 0.8% with a repeatability of 1%. Tests are currently underway on 280-m lengths.

We present an inexpensive (<US$500) and easily replicable integral field unit for use on small aperture telescopes. Based on a commercial small spectrograph (SBIG Self-Guiding Spectrograph) and a 37 optical fibre bundle integral field unit with each fibre having 50μm cores and a pitch of 125μm. It has an overall field-of-view of 40 arc seconds (2.6arcsec/core), a resolution of 9Å from 3995Å to 7170Å and an average system efficiency of 9%, yielding a signal-tonoise ratio of 10 for a 20min exposure of a 13mag/arcsec² source. Still in commissioning, we present first light observations of Vega and M57.

iSHELL is 1.15-5.4 μm high spectral resolution spectrograph being built for the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Dispersion is accomplished with silicon immersion gratings in order to keep the instrument small enough to be mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. The white pupil spectrograph is designed to produce resolving powers of up to R=70,000. Cross-dispersing gratings mounted in a tilt-able mechanism at the second pupil allow observers to select different wavelength ranges and, in combination with a slit wheel and dekker mechanism, slit lengths ranging from 5″ to 25″. One Teledyne 2048x2048 Hawaii 2RG array is used in the spectrograph, and one Raytheon 512x512 Aladdin 2 array is used in a slit viewer for object acquisition, guiding, and imaging. About $4 million in funding has been provided by NSF, NASA and the University of Hawaii. First light is expected in about 2015. In this paper we discuss the science drivers, instrument design and expected performance.

The fiber instrument data simulator is an in-house software tool that simulates detector images of fiber-fed spectrographs developed by the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO). In addition to helping validate the instrument designs, the resulting simulated images are used to develop the required data reduction software. Example applications that have benefited from the tool usage are the HERMES and SAMI instrumental projects for the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). Given the sophistication of these projects an end-to-end data simulator that accurately models the predicted detector images is required. The data simulator encompasses all aspects of the transmission and optical aberrations of the light path: from the science object, through the atmosphere, telescope, fibers, spectrograph and finally the camera detectors. The simulator runs under a Linux environment that uses pre-calculated information derived from ZEMAX models and processed data from MATLAB. In this paper, we discuss the aspects of the model, software, example simulations and verification.

SPIRou is a near-IR (0.98-2.35μm), echelle spectropolarimeter / high precision velocimeter being designed as a nextgeneration instrument for the 3.6m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, with the main goal of detecting Earth-like planets around low-mass stars and magnetic fields of forming stars. The unique scientific and technical capabilities of SPIRou are described in a series of seven companion papers. In this paper, the Front End of the instrument is presented. Positioned at the Cassegrain Focal plane of the telescope, the front end is constituted of an atmospheric dispersion corrector, a field viewer with an image stabilization unit (0.03 arc seconds RMS stabilization goal), a calibration wheel and an achromatic polarimeter unit based on Fresnel Rhombs. The polarimeter permits the circular and linear polarization analysis. The retardance of the Fresnel rhombs is nominal to better than 0.5% in the whole spectral domain. The evaluation and the reduction of the thermal background of the Front end is a challenging part of the instrument.

The Echelle spectrograph FOCES¹ is currently located at the laboratories of Munich University Observatories under pressure and temperature stabilized conditions. It is being used as a test bed for a number of different stability issues related to high precision radial velocity spectroscopy. We utilize FOCES to study spectrograph stability, illumination stability and fiber transport stability. With this work we continue the series of papers that present our efforts to obtain temperature and pressure stabilization in the spectrograph environment. In particular we present first optical measurement results and compare them to simulations previously published. We show the movement of the image on the CCD with changes of pressure and temperature and the stability of the spot positions in the stabilized system using measurements done by a ThAr gas discharge source.

The instrument group of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics has been commissioned by the Gemini Observatory as one of the three competing organizations to conduct a conceptual design study for a new Gemini High-Resolution Optical Spectrograph (GHOS). This paper outlines the main features of the optical design, including the Cassegrain-mounted science input unit, the bench-mounted spectrograph and the fibre relay system. The predicted imaging performance and efficiency are presented with the design trade offs explored in the study.

Polarimetric studies of minor Solar System bodies are useful to access physical parameters, such as albedo and diameter, which are both important and difficult to derive by other techniques. Current activities in this field are limited since most instruments adopted in recent observing campaigns involve photomultipliers detectors. These sensors are suitable for observations of objects with fast polarization variations, but usually suffer from low quantum efficiency. This severely limits the number of accessible targets. For asteroids, the polarization evolves slowly enough to allow more sensitive albeit slower detectors (CCD-based polarimeters). However, polarimetric measurement accuracy may be hampered with usual "sequential" polarimeters. Indeed, retarder plate swapping time, readout and exposure time add up. Consequently, the time laps between complementary polarization measurements (some minutes) may be non-negligible in some cases, compared to the evolution time of the polarization parameters. Moreover, polarimetric accuracy may also be limited by airmass variations between complementary exposures. We are developing a new "single-shot" CCD polarimeter based on a "double-Wollaston" configuration already described in literature [9][10]. This allows simultaneous acquisition of the three Stokes parameters I, Q, U without any moving parts. So, the linear polarization degree can be measured accurately, even for targets with fast polarization and/or airmass variations. Presently, the polarization analyzer is in calibration phase, and will be installed soon at the F/12.5 Cassegrain focus of the West telescope at the "Centre Pédagogique Planète et Univers" facility (C2PU, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Plateau de Calern, France).

The Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics was recently selected by the Gemini Observatory as one of the three competing organizations to conduct a conceptual design study for a new Gemini High-Resolution Optical Spectrograph (GHOS). This paper outlines the main features of the mechanical design, including the Cassegrain-mounted science input unit, the bench-mounted spectrograph and the fiber relay system. Topics include the design challenges associated with multiobject fiber relays in the science unit, environmental stability of the spectrograph bench and routing and handling of fibers in the Gemini dome environment.

GRB jets contain rapidly moving electrons which will spiral around magnetic field lines. This causes them to emit polarized synchrotron emission. We have built a series of polarimeters (RINGO and RINGO2) to investigate this by measuring the polarization of optical light from GRBs at a certain single wavelength. The instruments are mounted on the Liverpool Telescope, which is a fully robotic (i.e. unmanned) telescope on La Palma which reacts to triggers from satellites such as the NASA SWIFT mission. This has had great success, with the first ever detections of early time optical polarization being made. In addition, the first measurements of the change in optical polarization from a GRB as the jet expands have recently been obtained. In this paper we describe the design and construction of RINGO3. This will be a multi-colour instrument that can observe simultaneously at three wavelengths. By doing so we will be able to unambiguously identify where in the burst the polarized emission is coming from. This will allow us to distinguish between three possibilities: (1) Magnetic instabilities generated in the shock front, (2) Line of sight effects and (3) Large-scale magnetic fields present throughout the relativistic outflow. The instrument design combines a rapidly rotating polaroid, specially designed polarization insensitive dichroic mirrors and three electron multiplying CCD cameras to provide simultaneous wavelength coverage with a time resolution of 1 second.

ECHARPE spectrograph - Espectrógrafo ECHelle de Alta Resolução para o telescópio Perkin-Elmer - is being designed at LNA - Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica, Brazil - to be mounted on 1.60 meter telescope at Pico dos Dias Observatory, Brazil. It will offer a spectral resolution of R ~ 50000, in the interval 390-900 nm and in a single exposition. It will be a fiber fed, bench spectrograph with two channels: blue and red, fed by two optical fibers (object, sky or calibration) with aperture of 1.5 or 2.0 arcseconds. This paper reports on technical characteristics of the spectrograph mechanical design and presents a new developed mounting system for echelle grating and collimator and relay mirrors, which allows linear and rotational adjustments in all degrees of freedom without using springs.

Traditional color and airmass corrections can typically achieve ~0.02 mag precision in photometric observing conditions. A major limiting factor is the variability in atmospheric throughput, which changes on timescales of less than a night. We present preliminary results for a system to monitor the throughput of the atmosphere, which should enable photometric precision when coupled to more traditional techniques of less than 1% in photometric conditions. The system, aTmCam, consists of a set of imagers each with a narrow-band filter that monitors the brightness of suitable standard stars. Each narrowband filter is selected to monitor a different wavelength region of the atmospheric transmission, including regions dominated by the precipitable water, aerosol optical depth, etc. We have built a prototype system to test the notion that an atmospheric model derived from a few color indices measurements can be an accurate representation of the true atmospheric transmission. We have measured the atmospheric transmission with both narrowband photometric measurements and spectroscopic measurements; we show that the narrowband imaging approach can predict the changes in the throughput of the atmosphere to better than ~10% across a broad wavelength range, so as to achieve photometric precision less than 0.01 mag.

In this paper we present the results of image quality tests performed on the optical system of the Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment (CIRCE), a visitor-class near-IR imager, spectrograph, and polarimeter for the 10.4 meter Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). The CIRCE optical system is comprised of eight gold-coated aluminum alloy 6061 mirrors. We present surface roughness analysis of each individual component as well as optical quality of the whole system. We found all individual mirror surface roughness are within specifications except Fold mirrors 1 and 2. We plan to have these components re-cut and re-coated. We used a flat 0.2-arcseconds pinhole mask placed in the focal plane of the telescope to perform the optical quality tests of the system. The pinhole mask covers the entire field of view of the instrument. The resulting image quality allows seeing-limited performance down to seeing of 0.3 arcseconds FWHM. We also observed that our optical system produces a negative field curvature, which compensates the field curvature of the Ritchey-Chretien GTC design once the instrument is on the telescope.

The cryogenic high resolution IR echelle spectrograph CRIRES is the ESO infrared (0.95−5.4 μm) high resolution spectrograph operating at the Nasmyth A focus of VLT-UT1. The instrument provides long-slit (31") spectroscopy with resolving power up to R=100,000 over a quite narrow wavelengths range, about 1/70 of the central wavelength. Observations of compact objects (e.g. stellar photospheres) could be made much more efficient by implementing a cross-dispersed mode, which increases the simultaneous spectral coverage by an order of magnitude or more. This paper presents the design of a relatively simple system to add cross-dispersed modes to CRIRES with a minimum impact on the instrument optics and mechanics.

We have built a visible multi-spectral imager (MSI) for the 1.6-m Pirka telescope of the Hokkaido University in Hokkaido, Japan. The instrument is equipped with two liquid crystal tunable filters and a 512 × 512 pixel EMCCD camera. One of the major purposes of this instrument is to obtain multi-spectral images (series of narrow-band images at many different wavelengths) of the solar planets rapidly. These tunable filters are a Lyot filter with liquid crystal variable retarders and thus can tune the transmitting wavelength rapidly without moving parts. Their spectral ranges are 400–720 nm and 650–1100 nm and the bandwidth is typically 10 nm on both filters. The EMCCD camera can obtain images at a frame rate of about 32 Hz, which also enables us to improve the spatial resolution with the shift-and-add or the Lucky imaging techniques. The field of view is 3.3 × 3.3 arcmin with a pixel scale of 0.39 arcsec pixel⁻¹. The instrument also has UBV RI-band broad-band filters and several narrow-band filters. MSI is mounted at the f/12 Cassegrain focus of the telescope. It had the first light on February 2011, and then have been used for several astronomical and planetary science programs as a major facility instrument at this telescope. We describe the design, construction, integration, and performance of this multi-spectral imager.

The MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) instrument (see Bacon et al., this conference) for ESO's Very Large Telescope VLT employs 24 integral field units (spectrographs). Each of these is equipped with its own cryogenically cooled CCD head. The heads are individually cooled by continuous flow cryostats. The detectors used are deep depletion e2v CCD231-84 with 4096x4112 active 15 μm pixels. The MUSE Instrument Detector System is now in the final integration and test phase on the instrument. This paper gives an overview of the architecture and performance of the complex detector system including ESO's New General detector Controllers (NGC) for the 24 science detectors, the detector head electronics and the data acquisition system with Linux Local Control Units. NGC is sub-divided into 4 Detector Front End units each operating 6 CCDs. All CCDs are simultaneously read out through 4 ports to achieve short readout times at low noise levels. All science grade CCDs were thoroughly characterized on ESO's optical detectors testbench facility and the test results processed and documented in a semi-automated, reproducible way. We present the test methodology and the results that fully confirm the feasibility of these detectors for their use in this challenging instrument.

PANIC is developed at MPIA, Heidelberg, Germany and IAA, Granada, Spain. This instrument will cover a field of view of 0.5x0.5 degrees at the 2.2m telescope in the spectral bands Z to K. All hardware has been manufactured, the instrument is currently assembled and tested. In this contribution we describe results of some tests.

SPIRou is a near-IR (0.98-2.35μm), echelle spectropolarimeter / high precision velocimeter being designed as a next-generation instrument for the 3.6m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, with the main goal of detecting Earth-like planets around low mass stars and magnetic fields of forming stars. The unique scientific and technical capabilities of SPIRou are described in a series of seven companion papers. In this paper, the fiber links which connects the polarimeter unit to the cryogenic spectrograph unit (35 meter apart) are described. The pupil slicer which forms a slit compatible with the spectrograph entrance specifications is also discussed in this paper. Some challenging aspects are presented. In particular this paper will focus on the manufacturing of 35 meter fibers with a very low loss attenuation (< 13dB/km) in the non-usual fiber spectral domain from 0.98 μm to 2.35 μm. Other aspects as the scrambling performance of the fiber links to reach high accuracy radial velocity measurements (1m/s) and the design of the pupil slicer exposed at a cryogenic and vacuum environment will be discussed.

The purpose of CABERNET- Podet-Met (CAmera BEtter Resolution NETwork, Pole sur la Dynamique de l'Environnement Terrestre - Meteor) project is the automated observation, by triangulation with three cameras, of meteor showers to perform a calculation of meteoroids trajectory and velocity. The scientific goal is to search the parent body, comet or asteroid, for each observed meteor. To install outdoor cameras in order to perform astronomy measurements for several years with high reliability requires a very specific design for the box. For these cameras, this contribution shows how we fulfilled the various functions of their boxes, such as cooling of the CCD, heating to melt snow and ice, the protecting against moisture, lightning and Solar light. We present the principal and secondary functions, the product breakdown structure, the technical solutions evaluation grid of criteria, the adopted technology products and their implementation in multifunction subsets for miniaturization purpose. To manage this project, we aim to get the lowest manpower and development time for every part. In appendix, we present the measurements the image quality evolution during the CCD cooling, and some pictures of the prototype.

The upcoming Wide-Field Upgrade (WFU) has ushered in a new era of instrumentation for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). Here, we present the design, construction progress, and lab tests completed to date of the blue-optimized second generation Low Resolution Spectrograph (LRS2-B). LRS2-B is a dual-channel, fiber fed instrument that is based on the design of the Visible Integral Field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS), which is the new flagship instrument for carrying out the HET Dark Energy eXperiment (HETDEX). LRS2-B utilizes a microlens-coupled integral field unit (IFU) that covers a 7”x12” area on the sky having unity fill-factor with ~300 spatial elements that subsample the median HET image quality. The fiber feed assembly includes an optimized dichroic beam splitter that allows LRS2-B to simultaneously observe 370 <λ(nm) < 470 and 460 < λ(nm) < 700 at fixed resolving powers of R ≈ λ/Δλ ≈ 1900 and 1200, respectively. We discuss the departures from the nominal VIRUS design, which includes the IFU, fiber feed, camera correcting optics, and volume phase holographic grisms. Additionally, the motivation for the selection of the wavelength coverage and spectral resolution of the two channels is briefly discussed. One such motivation is the follow-up study of spectrally and (or) spatially resolved Lyα emission from z ≈ 2.5 star-forming galaxies in the HETDEX survey. LRS2-B is planned to be a commissioning instrument for the HET WFU and should be on-sky during quarter 4 of 2013. Finally, we mention the current state of LRS2-R, the red optimized sister instrument of LRS2-B.

We present a preliminary design for a red-sensitive spectrograph. The spectrograph is optimized to operate over the 600- 1000 nm spectral range at a resolution of R = λ/▵λ ~2000 and is designed specifically for the 2.7-m Harlan J. Smith Telescope at McDonald Observatory. The design is compact and cost effective and should have very high throughput. The principles of the design can be extended to other purposes, such as a unit spectrograph for the DESpec project or other projects that require good performance in the red. In this paper, we will discuss the selection of components as well as the choice of optical layouts and the theoretical throughput of the instrument.

We study the effects of atmospheric emission lines in the night sky on spectroscopic measurements in the 0.4-2.4 μm range at resolutions 100≤R≤50000 to determine an optimal observing resolution. We build a model of the background sky spectrum at various moon phases and calculate the fraction of pixels free of emission lines in 7 different band passes while varying the resolution. We then discuss the effect of the background emission on the signal-to-noise of constant flux targets to determine an optimal resolution at which to observe. Preliminary results show that the emission lines have little to no effect on the selection of resolution in the optical, but that in the wavelengths ranging from 1.0-2.4 μm the effects of atmospheric emission line suggests observing at a resolution of R>2000 is recommended.

We describe the design, construction, and expected performance of two new fiber integral field units (IFUs) - HexPak and GradPak - for the WIYN 3.5m Telescope Nasmyth focus and Bench Spectrograph. These are the first IFUs to provide formatted fiber integral field spectroscopy with simultaneous sampling of varying angular scales. HexPak and GradPak are in a single cable with a dual-head design, permitting easy switching between the two different IFU heads on the telescope without changing the spectrograph feed: the two heads feed a variable-width double-slit. Each IFU head is comprised of a fixed arrangement of fibers with a range of fiber diameters. The layout and diameters of the fibers within each array are scientifically-driven for observations of galaxies: HexPak is designed to observe face-on spiral or spheroidal galaxies while GradPak is optimized for edge-on studies of galaxy disks. HexPak is a hexagonal array of 2.9 arcsec fibers subtending a 40.9 arcsec diameter, with a high-resolution circular core of 0.94 arcsec fibers subtending 6 arcsec diameter. GradPak is a 39 by 55 arcsec rectangular array with rows of fibers of increasing diameter from angular scales of 1.9 arcsec to 5.6 arcsec across the array. The variable pitch of these IFU heads allows for adequate sampling of light profile gradients while maintaining the photon limit at different scales.

The red channel of the Palomar Double Spectrograph (DBSP) on the 200-inch Hale Telescope has been upgraded with a new deep-depletion CCD from LBNL. Its redder response produced a significant increase of the throughput above 550 nm, and its longer dimension more than doubled the spectral coverage. A special Dewar was designed to accommodate a detector mount which includes features to minimize CCD motion due to thermal cycling, in spite of the very simple "picture frame" packaging of the CCD. The new Dewar also includes some novel features to improve the liquid nitrogen hold time while staying within the size envelope allowed in the Cassegrain cage. We describe these changes along with the detector characterization.

SPIRou is a near-infrared, echelle spectropolarimeter/velocimeter under design for the 3.6m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The unique scientific capabilities and technical design features are described in the accompanying (eight) papers at this conference. In this paper we focus on the lens design of the optical spectrograph. The SPIROU spectrograph is a near infrared fiber fed double pass cross dispersed spectrograph. The cryogenic spectrograph is connected with the Cassegrain unit by the two science fibers. It is also fed by the fiber coming from the calibration box and RV reference module of the instrument. It includes 2 off-axis parabolas (1 in double pass), an echelle grating, a train of cross disperser prisms (in double pass), a flat folding mirror, a refractive camera and a detector. This paper describes the optical design of the spectrograph unit and estimates the performances. In particular, the echelle grating options are discussed as the goal grating is not available from the market.

The SOAR Telescope Echelle Spectrograph - STELES - is part of the Brazilian participation on the 4.1m SOAR telescope second-generation instrumentation. In view of SOAR´s high image quality and moderately large collecting area and the near UV capability, it will be able to yield high quality spectroscopic data for a large variety of objects of astrophysical interests. The spectrograph is a R4 cross-dispersed echelle fed by the SOAR Nasmyth focus, operating in a quasi-Littrow white pupil configuration, and a resolving power of R ≈ 50,000, covering the 300-900nm spectral range in one shot. STELES is a bench spectrograph which will be mounted vertically on one side of the SOAR Telescope fork. The ninetydegree inversion of the mechanical components, due to the vertical position of the instrument, plus the close proximity of most components, due to the spectrograph compactness, were requirements carefully observed during the mechanical design process. This paper describes the mechanical characteristics of the individual assemblies that make up the STELES mechanical design. The STELES instrument can be separated into two sections, the fore optics, and the spectrograph. The fore optics has the mechanisms from the SOAR telescope down to the STELES bench spectrograph, and the bench spectrograph has the mechanisms for the spectrograph covering the red and blue spectrum.

CARMENES is a fiber-fed high-resolution échelle spectrograph for the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope. The instrument is built by a German-Spanish consortium under the lead of the Landessternwarte Heidelberg. The search for planets around M dwarfs with a radial velocity accuracy of 1 m/s is the main focus of the planned science. Two channels, one for the visible, another for the near-infrared, will allow observations in the complete wavelength range from 550 to 1700 nm. To ensure the stability, the instrument is working in vacuum in a thermally controlled environment. The optical design of both channels of the instrument and the front-end, as well as the opto-mechanical design, are described.

We have evaluated on-sky performances of a mid-infrared camera MAX38 (Mid-infrared Astronomical eXploerer) on the miniTAO 1-meter telescope. A Strehl ratio at the N-band is estimated to be 0.7-0.8, and it reaches to 0.9 at the 37.7 micron, indicating that diffraction limited angular resolution is almost achieved at the wavelength range from 8 to 38 micron. System efficiencies at the N and the Q-band are estimated with photometry of standard stars. The sensitivity at the 30 micron cannot be exactly estimated because there are no standard stars bright enough. We use the sky brightness instead. The estimated efficiencies at the 8.9, 18.7, and 31.7 micron are 4%, 3%, 15% , respectively. One-sigma sensitivity in 1 sec integration of each filter is also evaluated. These give good agreements with the designed values. Preliminary scientific results are briefly reported.

A multiplexed moderate resolution (R = 34,000) and a single object high resolution (R = 90,000) spectroscopic facility for the entire 340 - 950nm wavelength region has been designed for Gemini. The result is a high throughput, versatile instrument that will enable precision spectroscopy for decades to come. The extended wavelength coverage for these relatively high spectral resolutions is achieved by use of an Echelle grating with VPH cross-dispersers and for the R = 90,000 mode utilization of an image slicer. The design incorporates a fast, efficient, reliable system for acquiring targets over the7 arcmin field of Gemini. This paper outlines the science case development and requirements flow-down process that leads to the configuration of the HIA instrument and describes the overall GHOS conceptual design. In addition, this paper discusses design trades examined during the conceptual design study instrument group of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics has been commissioned by the Gemini Observatory as one of the three competing organizations to conduct a conceptual design study for a new Gemini High-Resolution Optical Spectrograph (GHOS). This paper outlines the science case development and requirements flow-down process that leads to the configuration of the HIA instrument and describes the overall GHOS conceptual design. In addition, this paper discusses design trades examined during the conceptual design study.

At least during the last ten years, the Brazilian astronomical community has been asking for an echelle spectrograph for the 1.6 m telescope installed at Pico dos Dias Observatory (Brazópolis, MG, Brazil, OPD/MCTI/LNA). Among the scientific cases are topics related to the chemical evolution of the Galaxy, asteroseismology, chemical composition and chromospheric activities of solar type stars and the relations between solar analogues and terrestrial planets. During 2009 the project finally got started. The called ECHARPE spectrograph (Espectrógrafo ECHelle de Alta Resolução para o telescópio Perkin-Elmer) is being projected to offer a spectral resolution of R ~ 50000, in the range 390-900 nm and with a single exposition. It will be a bench spectrograph with two channels: blue and red, fed by two optical fibers (object, sky or calibration) with aperture of 1.5 or 2.0 arcseconds. The instrument will be placed in one of the telescope pillar ramification, in the originals installations of a Coudé spectrograph and in a specially created environment controlled room. In this work we will present the scientific motivations, the conceptual optical design, the expected performance of the spectrograph, and the status of its development. ECHARPE is expected to be delivered to the astronomical community in 2014, fully prepared and optimized for remote operations.

Cryo-coolers are widely used to provide the required temperature levels of ESO’s VLT instrumentation suite, mainly for infrared instruments and their detectors. Nevertheless, mechanical vibrations induced by these refrigerator systems became a serious issue over the last years. Especially for the extremely sensitive VLT-Interferometer even micro vibration levels can be critical. As a consequence ESO started some time ago a comprehensive vibration reduction program. Major tasks involved are the quantification of typical cryo-cooler instrument vibration levels and their impact on the VLT / VLT-I optical stability. This paper describes the design, construction and calibration of a dedicated VLT dummy instrument comprising six powerful state-of-the-art 2-stage cold heads and the subsequent comprehensive vibration measurement test campaign. As a result trendsetting cryo-cooler instrument design and operation recommendations are presented.

A simple concept is described that uses volume phase holographic gratings as polarizing dispersers for a high efficiency, high resolution spectropolarimeter. Although the idea has previously been mentioned in the literature as possible, such a concept has not been explored in detail. Performance analysis is presented for a VPHG spectropolarimeter concept that could be utilized for both solar and night-time astronomy. Instrumental peak efficiency can approach 100% with spectral dispersions permitting R~200,000 spectral resolution with diffraction limited telescopes. The instrument has 3-channels: two dispersed image planes with orthogonal polarization and an undispersed image plane. The concept has a range of versatility where it could be configured (with appropriate half-wave plates) for slit-fed spectroscopy or without slits for snapshot/hyperspectral/tomographic spectroscopic imaging. Multiplex gratings could also be used for the simultaneous recording of two separate spectral bands or multiple instruments could be daisy chained with beam splitters for further spectral coverage.

CYCLOPS2 is an upgrade for the UCLES high resolution spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, scheduled for commissioning in semester 2012A. By replacing the 5 mirror Coud´e train with a Cassegrain mounted fibre-based image slicer CYCLOPS2 simultaneously provides improved throughput, reduced aperture losses and increased spectral resolution. Sixteen optical fibres collect light from a 5.0 arcsecond² area of sky and reformat it into the equivalent of a 0.6 arcsecond wide slit, delivering a spectral resolution of R= 70000 and up to twice as much flux as the standard 1 arcsecond slit of the Coud´e train. CYCLOPS2 also adds support for simultaneous ThAr wavelength calibration via a dedicated fibre. CYCLOPS2 consists of three main components, the fore-optics unit, fibre bundle and slit unit. The fore optics unit incorporates magnification optics and a lenslet array and is designed to mount to the CURE Cassegrain instrument interface, which provides acquisition, guiding and calibration facilities. The fibre bundle transports the light from the Cassegrain focus to the UCLES spectrograph at Coud´e and also includes a fibre mode scrambler. The slit unit consists of the fibre slit and relay optics to project an image of the slit onto the entrance aperture of the UCLES spectrograph. CYCLOPS2 builds on experience with the first generation CYCLOPS fibre system, which we also describe in this paper. We present the science case for an image slicing fibre feed for echelle spectroscopy and describe the design of CYCLOPS and CYCLOPS2.

We report on echelle gratings produced by diamond turning with groove spacings coarser than 20 lines per mm. Increasing the groove spacing of an echelle reduces the free spectral range allowing infrared orders to be matched to the detector size. Reflection echelle gratings designed for the near-infrared have potential wide application in both ambient temperature as well as cryogenic astronomical spectrographs. Diamond turned reflection echelle gratings are currently employed in space-based high-resolution spectrographs for 2 – 4 μm planetary spectroscopy. Using a sample diamond turned grating we investigate the suitability of a 15 line/mm R3 echelle for use in ground-based 1 – 5 μm spectroscopy. We find this grating suitable for 3 – 5 μm high signal-to-noise, high-resolution applications. Controlling wavefront errors by an additional factor of two would permit use at high-resolution in the 1.5 – 2.5 μm region.

The SCExAO instrument at the Subaru telescope, mainly based on a PIAA coronagraph can benefit from the addition of a robust and simple shaped pupil coronagraph. New shaped pupils, fully optimized in 2 dimensions, make it possible to design optimal apodizers for arbitrarily complex apertures, for instance on-axis telescopes such as the Subaru telescope. We have designed several masks with inner working angles as small as 2.5 λ / D, and for high-contrast regions with different shapes. Using Princeton University nanofabrication facilities, we have manufactured two masks by photolithography. These masks have been tested in the laboratory, both in Princeton and in the facilities of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in Hilo. The goal of this work is to prepare tests on the sky of a shaped pupil coronagraph in 2012.

The Large Binocular Telescope is one of the most unusual 8 m class telescope and surely it has been inspirational to a number of novel concepts and innovations. We present here a couple of recently traced opto-mechanical designs to fit some niches in the parameters space of astrophysical usage. A coronagraph, as simple as possible, to take advantage of the LBT XAO ability dedicated to the ExoPlanets detection and a multiple very wide field spectrograph in which a large number of tiny cameras is foreseen, all with equal optical elements but for the pupil aberration corrector.

Two of the VLT instruments (Giraffe and VIMOS) are using the large magnetic E/150 from Prontor (with an aperture diameter of 150 mm). As we were facing an unacceptable number of failures with this component some improvement plan was discussed already in 2004. The final decision for starting this program was conditioned by the decision from the constructor to stop the production. The opportunity was taken to improve the design building a fully bi-stable mechanism in order to reduce the thermal dissipation. The project was developed in collaboration between the two main ESO sites doing the best use of the manpower and of the technical capability available at the two centers. The project took advantage of the laser Mask Manufacturing Unit and the invar sheets used to prepare the VIMOS MOS mask to fabricate the shutter petals. Our paper describes the development including the intensive and long optimization period. To conclude this optimization we proceed with a long life test on two units. These units have demonstrate a very high level of reliability (up to 100 000 cycles without failure which can be estimated to an equivalent 6 years of operation of the instrument) A new bi-stable shutter driver and controller have also been developed. Some of the highlights of this unit are the fully configurable coil driving parameters, usage of braking strategy to dump mechanical vibration and reduce mechanical wearing, configurable usage of OPEN and CLOSE sensors, non volatile storage of parameters, user friendly front panel interface.

We report on the final design and current status of a 1-5 micron infrared test bench at the ETH Zurich Institute for Astronomy. This facility will enable us to characterize infrared optics, both reflective and transmissive, at cryogenic operating temperatures for both ground- and space-based applications. A focus of our lab is to facilitate the detection and characterization of extra-solar planets. The test bench is designed to characterize a range of spectrally dispersive and diffraction suppression optics such as filters, grisms, gratings, as well as both focal and pupil plane coronagraphs. The test bench is built around a 2048x2048 HAWAII-2RG detector from Teledyne Imaging Systems. The optical bench is envisioned to operate down to 30 K. “First light” is expected in the second half of 2012. We outline the status of the project, and describe the capabilities of the test bench in detail in order to alert potential collaborators to this new capability.

PIMMS IR is a prototype high resolution diraction limited spectrograph operating in the near infrared. Its current conguration has a bandwidth of 8nm centred on 1550nm with a resolving power, λ/Δλ, of 31000 with the option to increase this to ~60000 using a dual grating system. Remarkably, this is 85% of the theoretical limit for Gaussian illumination of a diraction grating. It is based upon the PIMMS#0 (photonic integrated multi-mode micro-spectrograph), a design that utilises the multi-mode to single-mode conversion of the photonic lantern. By feeding the spectrograph with the single-mode bres we are able to design and build a spectrograph whose performance is diraction limited and independent of the input source (i.e. a telescope) it is attached to. The spectrograph has with a throughput of ~70% (that is the light from the single-mode entrance slit that lands on the detector). The spectrograph is also extremely compact with a footprint of just 450mm x 190mm. Here we present the design of PIMMS IR and its performance characteristics determined from ray tracing, physical optics simulations and experimental measurements.Δ

The Integrated Photonic Spectrograph (IPS) is a complete spectrograph within a single silica photonic chip, that has no moving parts, is highly resistant to stress and temperature induced flexure and is far smaller than existing bulk-optic spectrographs. There has been considerable development in this all-photonic approach, culminating in a recent successful on-telescope test, which saw the world's first astronomical spectra taken using a photonic spectrograph. However, the device's performance (in terms of resolving power and wavelength coverage) was limited by the predominantly telecommunications-grade design parameters used in chip manufacturing, and at this stage warrants a substantial redesign of the arrayed waveguide grating structure inside the IPS chips, to optimize it for astronomy. In this body of work we present a comprehensive redesign of arrayed waveguide grating chips to improve specific performance parameters of interest to astronomy. These include the free-spectral range, resolving power and the operational wavelength for the devices, with an analysis of the limitations and benefits of the redesigns for typical astronomical goals. We propose how the redesigns, along with other advancements in astrophotonics, can be used in conjunction with adaptive-optics systems to make a prototype instrument with competitive throughput and resolving power.

GNOSIS has provided the first on-telescope demonstration of a concept to utilize complex aperioidc fiber Bragg gratings to suppress the 103 brightest atmospheric hydroxyl emission doublets between 1.47-1.7 μm. The unit is designed to be used at the 3.9-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) feeding the IRIS2 spectrograph. Unlike previous atmospheric suppression techniques GNOSIS suppresses the lines before dispersion. We present the results of laboratory and on-sky tests from instrument commissioning. These tests reveal excellent suppression performance by the gratings and high inter-notch throughput, which combine to produce high fidelity OH-free spectra.

We present the performance characteristics of a water vapour monitor that has been permanently deployed at ESO’s Paranal observatory as a part of the VISIR upgrade project. After a careful analysis of the requirements and an open call for tender, the Low Humidity and Temperature Profiling microwave radiometer (LHATPRO), manufactured by Radiometer Physics GmbH (RPG), has been selected. The unit measures several channels across the strong water vapour emission line at 183 GHz, necessary for resolving the low levels of precipitable water vapour (PWV) that are prevalent on Paranal (median ~2.5 mm). The unit comprises the above humidity profiler (183-191 GHz), a temperature profiler (51-58 GHz), and an infrared radiometer (~10 μm) for cloud detection. The instrument has been commissioned during a 2.5 week period in Oct/Nov 2011, by comparing its measurements of PWV and atmospheric profiles with the ones obtained by 22 radiosonde balloons. In parallel an IR radiometer (Univ. Lethbridge) has been operated, and various observations with ESO facility spectrographs have been taken. The RPG radiometer has been validated across the range 0.5 – 9 mm demonstrating an accuracy of better than 0.1 mm. The saturation limit of the radiometer is about 20 mm. Currently, the radiometer is being integrated into the Paranal infrastructure to serve as a high time-resolution monitor in support of VLT science operations. The water vapour radiometer’s ability to provide high precision, high time resolution information on this important aspect of the atmosphere will be most useful for conducting IR observations with the VLT under optimal conditions.

We report the system design and predicted performance of the Florida IR Silicon immersion grating spectromeTer (FIRST). This new generation cryogenic IR spectrograph offers broad-band high resolution IR spectroscopy with R=72,000 at 1.4-1.8 μm and R=60,000 at 0.8-1.35 μm in a single exposure with a 2kx2k H2RG IR array. It is enabled by a compact design using an extremely high dispersion silicon immersion grating (SIG) and an R4 echelle with a 50 mm diameter pupil in combination with an Image Slicer. This instrument is operated in vacuum with temperature precisely controlled to reach long term stability for high precision radial velocity (RV) measurements of nearby stars, especially M dwarfs and young stars. The primary technical goal is to reach better than 4 m/s long term RV precision with J<9 M dwarfs within 30 min exposures. This instrument is scheduled to be commissioned at the Tennessee State University (TSU) 2-m Automatic Spectroscopic Telescope (AST) at Fairborn Observatory in spring 2013. FIRST can also be used for observing transiting planets, young stellar objects (YSOs), magnetic fields, binaries, brown dwarfs (BDs), ISM and stars. We plan to launch the FIRST NIR M dwarf planet survey in 2014 after FIRST is commissioned at the AST. This NIR M dwarf survey is the first large-scale NIR high precision Doppler survey dedicated to detecting and characterizing planets around 215 nearby M dwarfs with J< 10. Our primary science goal is to look for habitable Super-Earths around the late M dwarfs and also to identify transiting systems for follow-up observations with JWST to measure the planetary atmospheric compositions and study their habitability. Our secondary science goal is to detect and characterize a large number of planets around M dwarfs to understand the statistics of planet populations around these low mass stars and constrain planet formation and evolution models. Our survey baseline is expected to detect ~30 exoplanets, including 10 Super Earths, within 100 day periods. About half of the Super-Earths are in their habitable zones and one of them may be a transiting planet. The AST, with its robotic control and ease of switching between instruments (in seconds), enables great flexibility and efficiency, and enables an optimal strategy, in terms of schedule and cadence, for this NIR M dwarf planet survey.

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen operates an astrophysical observatory on the summit of Mt. Wendelstein ¹ which has been equipped with a modern 2m-class telescope.^2-4 The new Fraunhofer telescope is designed to sustain the excellent (< 0:8" median) seeing of the site [1, Fig. 1] over a FoV of 0:2 deg² utilizing a camera built around a customized 64 MPixel Mosaic (Spectral Instruments, 4 × (4k)² 15μm e2v CCDs). The Wendelstein Wide Field Imager⁵ had its commissioning in the lab in the course of the last few months and now waits to see first light on sky in the near future, i.e. when telescope commissioning allows to test science instruments.

In this contribution we present preliminary mechanical and optical tests of the Fabry-P´erot interferometer pro- totype developed at the "Tor Vergata" University Solar Physics Laboratory. Fabry-P´erot narrow filters are of great interest for the study of extended astronomical sources, such as the solar photosphere and chromosphere. The high transparency of the instrument allows for the necessary high time-resolution for fast dynamic processes observations. A dedicated software has been developed to control both coarse and fine piezo-actuated move- ments, allowing for fast (1ms) tuning capabilities. General mechanical behaviour has been tested for use at the focal plane of ground based telescopes and in the perspective of a new space-qualified prototype.

MMT-POL is an adaptive optics optimized imaging polarimeter designed for use at the 6.5m MMT. By taking full advantage of the adaptive optics secondary mirror of the MMT, this polarimeter offers diffraction-limited polarimetry with very low instrumental polarization and minimal thermal background. MMT-POL permits observations as diverse as protoplanetary discs, comets, red giant winds, (super)novae and ejecta, galaxies, and AGN. We report on the initial on-sky commissioning results of the instrument including a description of the instrument.

We present new data obtained with SpIOMM, the imaging Fourier transform spectrometer attached to the 1.6-m telescope of the Observatoire du Mont-Megantic in Québec. Recent technical and data reduction improvements have significantly increased SpIOMM's capabilities to observe fainter objects or weaker nebular lines, as well as continuum sources and absorption lines, and to increase its modulation efficiency in the near ultraviolet. To illustrate these improvements, we present data on the supernova remnant Cas A, planetary nebulae M27 and M97, the Wolf-Rayet ring nebula M1-67, spiral galaxies M63 and NGC 3344, as well as the interacting pair of galaxies Arp 84.

GIANO is a high resolution (R50,000) IR spectrograph which provides a quasi-complete coverage of the 0.95- 2.5μm wavelengths range in a single exposure. The instrument was integrated and tested in Arcetri-INAF (Florence, Italy) and will be commisioned at the 3.58m TNG Italian telescope in La Palma. The major scientific goals include the search for rocky planets with habitable conditions around low-mass stars, quantitative spectroscopy of brown dwarfs, accurate chemical abundances of high metallicity stars and stellar clusters. This presentation describes the status of the instrument and presents the first results obtained in laboratory during the acceptance tests.

Giano is a high resolution (R'50,000) infrared spectrograph with a near-complete coverage of the 0.95-2.5 microns wavelengths range. It was assembled in Arcetri-INAF (Florence) and is beeing shipped to the its final destination at the TNG telescope (La Palma) We present our measurements of internal wavelength stability of Giano spectra. We are using a new approach which gives both the wavelength and field tilts. We also show the comparison with the usual mono-dimensional approach.

The GMOS-N instrument was upgraded with new CCDs in October 2011, improving the instrument sensitivity at both red and blue wavelengths. The deep depletion devices are manufactured by e2v (42-90 with multi-layer 3 coating) and extend the useful wavelength range of GMOS-N to 0.98 microns (compared to 0.94 microns previously). These detectors also exhibit much lower fringing than the original EEV detectors that had been in use since GMOS-N was commissioned in 2002. All other characteristics of the new detectors (readout speed, pixel size and format, detector controller, noise, gain) are similar to the original CCDs. Operating the new detectors in all amps mode (2 per CCD) has effectively improved the readout speed by a factor of 2. The new devices were selected to provide a quick and relatively simply upgrade route while technical issues with the Hamamatsu devices, originally planned for the upgrade, were investigated and resolved. We discuss the rationale for this interim upgrade, the upgrade process and attending issues. The new detectors have been used for science since November 2011. We present commissioning results illustrating the resulting gain in sensitivity over the original detector package. Gemini is still committed to installing Hamamatsu devices, which will further extend the useful wavelength range of GMOS to 1.03 microns, in both North and South GMOS instruments. We discuss the status of the Hamamatsu project and the current planned schedule for these future upgrades.

We designed and constructed a special instrument to enable the determination of the stellar's spin orientation. The Differential image rotator for Stellar Spin Orientation, DeSSpOt, allows the simultaneous observations of two anti-parallel orientations of the star on the spectrum. On a high resolution ´echelle spectrum, the stellar rotation causes a slight line tilt visible in the spatial direction which is comparable to a rotation curve. We developed a new method, which exploits the variations in these tilts, to estimate the absolute position angle of the rotation axis. The line tilt is retrieved by a spectroastrometric extraction of the spectrum. In order to validate the method, we observed spectroscopic binaries with known orbital parameters. The determination of the orbital position angle is equivalent to the determination of the stellar position angle, but is easier to to detect. DeSSpOt was successfully implemented on the high resolution Coud´e spectrograph of the Th¨uringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg. The observations of Capella led to the determination of the orbital position angle. Our value of 37.2° is in agreement with the values previously found in the literature. As such we verified that both method and instrument are valid.

LINC-NIRVANA is an instrument to combine the light from both LBT primary mirrors in an imaging Fizeau interferometer. The goals in terms of resolution and field of view are quite ambitious, which leads to a complex instrument consisting of a bunch of subsystems. The layer oriented MCAO system alone is already quite complicated and to get everything working together properly is not a small challenge. As we are reaching the completion of LINC-NIRVANA's subsystems, it becomes more and more important to define a strategy to align all these various subsystems. The specific layout of LINC-NIRVANA imposes some restrictions and difficulties on the sequence and the method of this alignment. The main problem for example is that we have to get two perfectly symmetrical focal planes to be able to properly combine them interferometrically. This is the major step on which all further alignment is based on, since all the subsystems (collimator and camera optics, wavefront sensors, cold IR optics, etc.) rely on these focal planes as a reference. I will give a small introduction on the optics of the instrument and line out the resulting difficulties as well as the strategy that we want to apply in order to overcome these.

We have developed a germanium immersion grating mid-infrared cryogenic spectrograph (GIGMICS) designed for the Nasmyth focus stage of NAOJ Subaru 8.2-m telescope, which operates at N-band (8-13 μm) in wavelength (λ) with maximum resolving power R（≡λ/Δλ） ~ 50,000. A single crystal germanium echelle immersion grating (30 × 30 × 72 mm) for collimated beam size of 28 mmφ was fabricated by utilizing ultra precision micro-grinding method coupled with the ELID (ELectrolytic In-process Dressing) technique (Ohmori, H. 1992, Ebizuka et al. 2003, Tokoro et al. 2003). After the critical test for the application to the laboratory gas-phase IR high-resolution spectroscopy(Hirahara et al. 2010), we have conducted the “first light” astronomical observation of GIGMICS by the Kanata 1.5-m telescope at Higashi- Hiroshima Observatory from January to April, 2011. Toward many astronomical objects such as the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, circumstellar envelopes of late-type stars, proto-planetary nebulae, and interstellar molecular clouds in the vicinity of star-forming regions, we conducted spectroscopic observations in the N-band region.

The authors present the tradeoff and the merit criteria that lead to the selection of the M. Brunn [1] "un obscured four mirrors based telescope" as the collimator of the Optical Ground Support Equipment in the frame of the Assembly Integration and Verification (AIV) activities forecast for the optical characterization of the High Resolution Camera (HRIC) on board of the Simbio-sys mission to Mercury, instrument currently under development and manufacturing at Selex Galileo (SG) facilities in its Florence site. Several optical configurations have been accounted for the design and manufacturing of the three meters focal length, diffraction limited and wide field of view (0.4X0.6 degs) toolkit. From the classical un obscured systems such as the aspheric solution based onto two hyperbolic mirror, working under an f - number of 13.6, the Brunn solution revealed excellent optical quality free from coma, astigmatism and spherical aberration accomplished by an ultra compact design in within a volume of 1.2x1.0 x0.5 cubic meters and other basic advantages such as the relative easy way in aligning and manufacturing the mirrors.

Simulations of the expected performances of AMICA (Antarctic Multiband Infrared Camera) mounted on ITM (Infrared Telescope Maffei, formerly IRAIT) at Dome C, Antarctica, are here presented. The computation has been carried out through the analysis of images obtained by a focal plane simulator, here described, taking into account the telescope and the imaging system characteristics (optics, read-out electronics and detectors) and the site properties. The evaluation of the expected S/N ratio in various near- and mid-infrared pass-bands are fundamental to properly define the observational plans and the scheduling of the robotic observatory.

We present the first measurements of the near-infrared (NIR), specifically the J-band, sky background in the Canadian High Arctic. There has been considerable recent interest in the development of an astronomical observatory in Ellesmere Island; initial site testing has shown promise for a world-class site. Encouragement for our study came from sky background measurements on the high Antarctic glacial plateau in winter that showed markedly lower NIR emission when compared to good mid-latitude astronomical sites due to reduced emission from the Meinel bands, i.e. hydroxyl radical (OH) airglow lines. This is possibly a Polar effect and may also be present in the High Arctic. To test this hypothesis, we carried out an experiment which measured the the J-band sky brightness in the High Arctic during winter. We constructed a zenith-pointing, J-band photometer, and installed it at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) near Eureka, Nunavut (latitude: 80° N). We present the design of our ruggedized photometer and our results from our short PEARL observing campaign in February 2012. Taken over a period of four days, our measurements indicate that the J-band sky brightness varies between 15.5-15.9 mag arcsec²; with a measurement uncertainty of 0.15 mag. The uncertainty is entirely dominated by systematic errors present in our radiometric calibration. On our best night, we measured a fairly consistent sky brightness of 15.8 ± 0.15 mag arcsec². This is not corrected for atmospheric extinction, which is typically < 0.1 mag in the J-band on a good night. The measured sky brightness is comparable to an excellent mid-latitude site, but is not as dark as claimed by the Antarctic measurements. We discuss possible explanations of why we do not see as dark skies as in the Antarctic. Future winter-long sky brightness measurements are anticipated to obtain the necessary statistics to make a proper comparison with the Antarctic measurements.

Results from the first year of AMICA operations at Dome C are presented. AMICA is an astronomical camera for imaging between 2 and 24 μm designed to work automatically at the extreme conditions of Antarctica. Except for the cryostat, AMICA devices are hosted inside a rack whose operating conditions are automatically controlled. 120 days of environmental tests data have been obtained in 2011. The data concern the operating parameters of the system. The results show an excellent performance. A quality factor is computed as a function of the external conditions and a few critical correcting actions are described.

Originally, the Mercator telescope (Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma) only had one Cassegrain and one Nasmyth focal station available. Both foci are currently occupied and the exploitation scheme of the Mercator telescope does not allow regular instrument changes. To accommodate our new three-channel imager MAIA and to allow exible scheduling with rapid follow-up of transient phenomena, we have designed and built a new mechanism for the Nasmyth mirror that enables the use of the second Nasmyth focal station and of two compact intermediate foci at the front and the rear side of the telescope tube. This mechanism uses high-precision gears, bearings and optical encoders to allow for exible and very accurate positioning of the Nasmyth mirror along the rotation and tilt axes. It is controlled by a programmable logic controller (PLC) that is the precursor of a completely new PLC and OPC-UA based telescope control system. We present the design, the construction and the performance of this new Nasmyth mirror mechanism.

LINC-NIRVANA is an interferometric imaging camera, which combines the two 8.4 m telescopes of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The instrument operates in the wavelength range from 1.1 μm to 2.4 μm, covering the J, H and K-bands. The beam combining camera (NIRCS) offers the possibility to achieve diffraction limited images with the spatial resolution of a 23 m telescope. This camera, which combines the AO corrected beams of both telescopes, is designed to deliver a 10 arcsec x 10 arcsec diffraction limited field of view. The optics and cryo-mechanics are designed for operation at 60 Kelvin. Equipped with a HAWAII-2 detector mounted on a rotation stage in order to compensate for the sky rotation, a filter wheel and a dichroic wheel to split the light into the science channel and the fringe tracking channel, the camera is fairly large and complex and requires certain features to be considered and tested. The verification of all these components follows a challenging AIV plan. We describe this AIV phase from initial integration of individual units to the final verification tests of the complete system. We report the performance of the cryogenic opto-mechanics and of the science detector. We also demonstrate the functionality of the cryo-mechanics and the cryo-cooling at sub-system level, which represents the current state of integration. Finally, we discuss key elements of our design and potential pros and cons.

A new advanced high resolution spectrograph has been developed by Kiwistar Optics of Industrial Research Ltd., New Zealand. The instrument, KiwiSpec R4-100, is bench-mounted, bre-fed, compact (0.75m by 1.5m footprint), and is well-suited for small to medium-sized telescopes. The instrument makes use of several advanced concepts in high resolution spectrograph design. The basic design follows the classical white pupil concept in an asymmetric implementation and employs an R4 echelle grating illuminated by a 100mm diameter collimated beam for primary dispersion. A volume phase holographic grating (VPH) based grism is used for cross-dispersion. The design also allows for up to four camera and detector channels to allow for extended wavelength coverage at high eciency. A single channel prototype of the instrument has been built and successfully tested with a 1m telescope. Targets included various spectrophotometric standard stars and several radial velocity standard stars to measure the instrument's light throughput and radial velocity capabilities. The prototype uses a 725 lines/mm VPH grism, an off-the-shelf camera objective, and a 2k×2k CCD. As such, it covers the wavelength range from 420nm to 660nm and has a resolving power of R ≈ 40,000. Spectrophotometric and precision radial velocity results from the on-sky testing period will be reported, as well as results of laboratory-based measurements. The optical design of KiwiSpec, and the various multi-channel design options, will be presented elsewhere in these proceedings.

The instrument group of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics has been commissioned by the Gemini Observatory to participate in a competitive conceptual design study for a new Gemini High-Resolution Optical Spectrograph (GHOS). Concurrently this same group is working in partnership with both the Gemini and CFH Telescopes to design the Gemini Remote Access to CFHT ESPaDOnS Spectrograph, (GRACES). Both these instruments will use a fiber feed allowing light received by the Gemini telescope to be processed via remotely positioned instruments. This paper will explore the similarities and differences in requirements, inherent challenges, concepts, design solutions and areas of concept sharing.

Our group has designed, sourced and constructed a radiosonde/ground-station pair using inexpensive opensource hardware. Based on the Arduino platform, the easy to build radiosonde allows the atmospheric science community to test and deploy instrumentation packages that can be fully customized to their individual sensing requirements. This sensing/transmitter package has been successfully deployed on a tethered-balloon, a weather balloon, a UAV airplane, and is currently being integrated into a UAV quadcopter and a student-built rocket. In this paper, the system, field measurements and potential applications will be described. As will the science drivers of having full control and open access to a measurement system in an age when commercial solutions have become popular but are restrictive in terms of proprietary sensor specifications, “black-box” calibration operations or data handling routines, etc. The ability to modify and experiment with both the hardware and software tools is an essential part of the scientific process. Without an understanding of the intrinsic biases or limitations in your instruments and system, it becomes difficult to improve them or advance the knowledge in any given field.