5 research outputs found

    MEGARA, the R=6000-20000 IFU and MOS of GTC

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    MEGARA is the new generation IFU and MOS optical spectrograph built for the 10.4m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC). The project was developed by a consortium led by UCM (Spain) that also includes INAOE (Mexico), IAA-CSIC (Spain) and UPM (Spain). The instrument arrived to GTC on March 28th 2017 and was successfully integrated and commissioned at the telescope from May to August 2017. During the on-sky commissioning we demonstrated that MEGARA is a powerful and robust instrument that provides on-sky intermediate-to-high spectral resolutions R_(FWHM) ~ 6,000, 12,000 and 20,000 at an unprecedented efficiency for these resolving powers in both its IFU and MOS modes. The IFU covers 12.5 x 11.3 arcsec2 while the MOS mode allows observing up to 92 objects in a region of 3.5 x 3.5 arcmin^(2) . In this paper we describe the instrument main subsystems, including the Folded-Cassegrain unit, the fiber link, the spectrograph, the cryostat, the detector and the control subsystems, and its performance numbers obtained during commissioning where the fulfillment of the instrument requirements is demonstrated

    Delivery and integration of MEGARA at GTC: the process of going from laboratory to the telescope

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    MEGARA is an IFU & MOS medium-resolution spectrograph that finished its commissioning at the GTC 10m telescope on August 2017. MEGARA is a fiber-fed high-resolution spectrograph with two major units, Fiber-MOS & Spectrograph, that are now located at the Folded-Cass F and Nasmyth-A foci of GTC respectively. These are linked by more than 1200 fibers 44.5m-length split between two observing modes, the LCB (Integral Field Unit, IFU) and a Multi-Object (MOS) capability with 92 robotic positioners each one provided with a mini-bundle of 7 fibers. The spectrograph can accommodate 18 VPHs (11 of them can be simultaneously mounted) covering the visible wavelength range at Resolving Powers between R=6000-20000. This paper presents the sequence of tasks carried out after Laboratory Acceptance at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid to move the whole instrument to the GTC. A detailed day-to-day plan was followed to disassemble, pack, transport, reintegrate the full instrument at the GTC and to verify performance to ensure the instrument was ready for commissioning. The lessons learnt are relevant to other double-focus instruments being developed such as WEAVE@WHT or PFS@Subaru

    RGB photometric calibration of 15 million Gaia stars

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    Although the use of RGB photometry has exploded in the last decades due to the advent of high-quality and inexpensive digital cameras equipped with Bayer-like color filter systems, there is surprisingly no catalogue of bright stars that can be used for calibration purposes. Since due to their excessive brightness, accurate enough spectrophotometric measurements of bright stars typically cannot be performed with modern large telescopes, we have employed historical 13-color medium-narrow-band photometric data, gathered with quite reliable photomultipliers, to fit the spectrum of 1346 bright stars using stellar atmosphere models. This not only constitutes a useful compilation of bright spectrophotometric standards well spread in the celestial sphere, the UCM library of spectrophotometric spectra, but allows the generation of a catalogue of reference RGB magnitudes, with typical random uncertainties ∼ 0.01 mag. For that purpose, we have defined a new set of spectral sensitivity curves, computed as the median of 28 sets of empirical sensitivity curves from the literature, that can be used to establish a standard RGB photometric system. Conversions between RGB magnitudes computed with any of these sets of empirical RGB curves and those determined with the new standard photometric system are provided. Even though particular RGB measurements from single cameras are not expected to provide extremely accurate photometric data, the repeatability and multiplicity of observations will allow access to a large amount of exploitable data in many astronomical fields, such as the detailed monitoring of light pollution and its impact on the night sky brightness, or the study of meteors, solar system bodies, variable stars, and transient objects. In addition, the RGB magnitudes presented here make the sky an accessible and free laboratory for the calibration of the cameras themselves

    First scientific observations with MEGARA at GTC

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    On June 25th 2017, the new intermediate-resolution optical IFU and MOS of the 10.4-m GTC had its first light. As part of the tests carried out to verify the performance of the instrument in its two modes (IFU and MOS) and 18 spectral setups (identical number of VPHs with resolutions R=6000-20000 from 0.36 to 1 micron) a number of astronomical objects were observed. These observations show that MEGARA@GTC is called to fill a niche of high-throughput, intermediateresolution IFU and MOS observations of extremely-faint narrow-lined objects. Lyman-α absorbers, star-forming dwarfs or even weak absorptions in stellar spectra in our Galaxy or in the Local Group can now be explored to a new level. Thus, the versatility of MEGARA in terms of observing modes and spectral resolution and coverage will allow GTC to go beyond current observational limits in either depth or precision for all these objects. The results to be presented in this talk clearly demonstrate the potential of MEGARA in this regard
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