The GTC project: under commissioning

Abstract

The GTC (Gran Telescopio Canarias) is an optical/IR telescope, with a 10,4 meter segmented primary, installed at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos (ORM), at La Palma.Past July 2007 it saw its First Light showing a very promising behaviour. The very good image quality achieved at that an early stage of telescope commissioning is a direct consequence of the quality of its optics, the high performances of its primary mirror control system, and the highly engineered telescope structure and servo system.At present, we are advancing with the telescope commissioning whose first results are presented here. The two Day One science instruments: OSIRIS and CanariCam are being prepared for installation and commissioning on the telescope. Science verification are planned to be initiated by the end of 2008 and regular operation by March 2009.

Development of an alignment device for the Prototype Segmented Mirror Telescope

“…Then, the star images formed by different segments were manually brought within a 0.5 arc-min diameter area so that further the alignment could be taken over by the APS device. 16 In the SALT telescope, the large alignment error is handled by moving the SH sensor perpendicular to the optical axis for a raster scan. 2 Whereas, the newly built Japanese segmented mirror telescope SEIMEI makes use of 18 reference LEDs fixed on the inner wall of the dome and a deflectrometry camera installed at the Nasmyth focus to bring the alignment errors within AE30 arc-sec.…”

“…In the case of the first light of the GTC telescope, a natural star image was projected on the large screen placed at the Nasmyth focus. Then, the star images formed by different segments were manually brought within a 0.5 arc-min diameter area so that further the alignment could be taken over by the APS device 16 . In the SALT telescope, the large alignment error is handled by moving the SH sensor perpendicular to the optical axis for a raster scan 2 .…”

OCTOCAM: a fast multichannel imager and spectrograph for the 10.4m GTC

“…OCTOCAM has been thought as a workhorse instrument that optimizes the use of GTC [1] [2] for broad-band singletarget observations both in imaging and spectroscopy for a wide range of science cases. It is based on the use of highefficiency dichroics to divide the light into eight different arms, one ultraviolet, four optical and three near-infrared.…”