A. Quirrenbach, P. Amado, J. Caballero, R. Mundt, A. Reiners, I. Ribas, W. Seifert, M. Abril, J. Aceituno, F. Alonso-Floriano, H. Anwand-Heerwart, M. Azzaro, F. Bauer, D. Barrado, S. Becerril, V. J. Bejar, D. Benitez, Z. Berdinas, M. Brinkmöller, M. Cardenas, E. Casal, A. Claret, J. Colomé, M. Cortes-Contreras, S. Czesla, M. Doellinger, S. Dreizler, C. Feiz, M. Fernandez, I. Ferro, B. Fuhrmeister, D. Galadi, I. Gallardo, M. Gálvez-Ortiz, A. Garcia-Piquer, R. Garrido, L. Gesa, V. Gómez Galera, J. González Hernández, R. Gonzalez Peinado, U. Grözinger, J. Guàrdia, E. Guenther, E. de Guindos, H.-J. Hagen, A. Hatzes, P. Hauschildt, J. Helmling, T. Henning, D. Hermann, R. Hernández Arabi, L. Hernández Castaño, F. Hernández Hernando, E. Herrero, A. Huber, K. Huber, P. Huke, S. Jeffers, E. de Juan, A. Kaminski, M. Kehr, M. Kim, R. Klein, J. Klüter, M. Kürster, M. Lafarga, L. Lara, A. Lamert, W. Laun, R. Launhardt, U. Lemke, R. Lenzen, M. Llamas, M. Lopez del Fresno, M. López-Puertas, J. López-Santiago, J. Lopez Salas, H. Magan Madinabeitia, U. Mall, H. Mandel, L. Mancini, J. Marin Molina, D. Maroto Fernández, E. Martín, S. Martín-Ruiz, C. Marvin, R. Mathar, E. Mirabet, D. Montes, J. Morales, R. Morales Muñoz, E. Nagel, V. Naranjo, G. Nowak, E. Palle, J. Panduro, V. Passegger, A. Pavlov, S. Pedraz, E. Perez, D. Pérez-Medialdea, M. Perger, M. Pluto, A. Ramón , R. Rebolo, P. Redondo, S. Reffert, S. Reinhart, P. Rhode, H.-W. Rix, F. Rodler, E. Rodríguez, C. Rodríguez López, R. Rohloff, A. Rosich, M Sanchez Carrasco, J. Sanz-Forcada, P. Sarkis, L. Sarmiento, S. Schäfer, J. Schiller, C. Schmidt, J. H. M. M. Schmitt, P. Schöfer, A. Schweitzer, D. Shulyak, E. Solano, O. Stahl, C. Storz, H. Tabernero, M. Tala, L. Tal-Or, R.-G. Ulbrich, G. Veredas, J. I. Vico Linares, F. Vilardell, K. Wagner, J. Winkler, M.-R. Zapatero Osorio, M. Zechmeister, M. Ammler-von Eiff, G. Anglada-Escudé, C. del Burgo, M. Garcia-Vargas, A. Klutsch, J.-L. Lizon, M. Lopez-Morales, A. Ofir, A. Pérez-Calpena, M. A. C. Perryman, E. Sánchez-Blanco , J. B. P. Strachan, J. Stürmer, J. Suárez, T. Trifonov, S. Tulloch, W. Xu
The CARMENES instrument is a pair of high-resolution (R⪆80,000) spectrographs covering the wavelength range from 0.52 to 1.71 μm, optimized for precise radial velocity measurements. It was installed and commissioned at the 3.5m telescope of the Calar Alto observatory in Southern Spain in 2015. The first large science program of CARMENES is a survey of ~ 300 M dwarfs, which started on Jan 1, 2016. We present an overview of all subsystems of CARMENES (front end, fiber system, visible-light spectrograph, near-infrared spectrograph, calibration units, etalons, facility control, interlock system, instrument control system, data reduction pipeline, data flow, and archive), and give an overview of the assembly, integration, verification, and commissioning phases of the project. We show initial results and discuss further plans for the scientific use of CARMENES.
The main goal of the CARMENES instrument is to perform high-accuracy measurements of stellar radial velocities (1 m/s) with long-term stability. CARMENES is installed at the 3.5 m telescope in the Calar Alto Observatory (Spain) and it is equipped with two spectrographs covering from the visible to the near-infrared. We present the software packages that are included in the instrument control layer. The coordination and management of CARMENES is handled by the Instrument Control System (ICS), which is responsible for carrying out the operations of the different subsystems providing a tool to operate the instrument in an integrated manner from low to high user interaction level. The ICS interacts with the following subsystems: the near-infrared (NIR) and visible channels, composed by the detectors and exposure meters; the calibration units; the environment sensors; the front-end electronics; the acquisition and guiding module; the interfaces with telescope and dome; and, finally, the software subsystems for operational scheduling of tasks, data processing, and data archiving. The software control framework and all the software modules and layers for the different subsystems contribute to maximize the scientific return of the instrument. The CARMENES workflow covers from the translation of the survey strategy into a detailed schedule to the data processing routines that extract radial velocity data from the observed targets. The control suite is integrated in the instrument since the end of 2015.
José M. Jerónimo Zafra, Rosario Sanz Mesa, Juan M. Gómez López, Julio F. Rodríguez Gómez, Beatriz Aparicio del Moral, Rafael Morales Muñoz, Gian Paolo Candini, M. Carmen Pastor Morales, Nicolás Robles Muñoz, José Juan López-Moreno, Ann Carine Vandaele, Eddy Neefs, Rachel Drummond, Sofie Delanoye, Sophie Berkenbosch, Roland Clairquin, Bojan Ristic, Jeroen Maes, Sabrina Bonnewijn, Manish R. Patel, Mark Leese
KEYWORDS: Control systems, Space operations, Field programmable gate arrays, Spectroscopy, Prototyping, Field programmable gate arrays, Prototyping, Telecommunications, Instrument modeling, Atmospheric sciences, System on a chip, Aerospace engineering
NOMAD is a spectrometer suite: UV-visible-IR spectral ranges. NOMAD is part of the payload of ESA ExoMars Trace
Gas Orbiter Mission. SINBAD boards are in charge of the communication and management of the power and control
between the spacecraft and the instrument channels. SINBAD development took four years, while the entire development
and test required five years, a very short time to develop an instrument devoted to a space mission. The hardware of
SINBAD is shown in the attached poster: developed boards, prototype boards and final models. The models were
delivered to the ESA in order to testing and integration with the spacecraft.
M. Pastor-Morales, Julio Rodríguez-Gómez, Rafael Morales-Muñoz, Juan Gómez-López, Beatriz Aparicio-del-Moral, Gian Paolo Candini, Jose Jerónimo-Zafra, Jose López-Moreno, Nicolás Robles-Muñoz, Rosario Sanz-Mesa, Eddy Neefs, Ann Vandaele, Rachel Drummond, Ian Thomas, Sophie Berkenbosch, Roland Clairquin, Sofie Delanoye, Bojan Ristic, Jeroen Maes, Sabrina Bonnewijn, Manish Patel, Mark Leese, Jon Mason
KEYWORDS: Space operations, Control systems, Mirrors, Technetium, Thulium, Telecommunications, Data storage, Software development, Sensors, Error control coding
The Spacecraft INterface and control Board for NomAD (SINBAD) is an electronic interface designed by the Instituto de Astroffisica de Andalucfia (IAA-CSIC). It is part of the Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery instrument (NOMAD) on board in the ESAs ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission. This mission was launched in March 2016. The SINBAD Flight Software (SFS) is the software embedded in SINBAD. It is in charge of managing the interfaces, devices, data, observing sequences, patching and contingencies of NOMAD. It is presented in this paper the most remarkable aspects of the SFS design, likewise the main problems and lessons learned during the software development process.
CARMENES is the new high-resolution high-stability spectrograph built for the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory (CAHA, Almería, Spain) by a consortium formed by German and Spanish institutions. This instrument is composed by two separated spectrographs: VIS channel (550-1050 nm) and NIR channel (950- 1700 nm). The NIR-channel spectrograph's responsible is the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAACSIC). It has been manufactured, assembled, integrated and verified in the last two years, delivered in fall 2015 and commissioned in December 2015.
One of the most challenging systems in this cryogenic channel involves the Cooling System. Due to the highly demanding requirements applicable in terms of stability, this system arises as one of the core systems to provide outstanding stability to the channel. Really at the edge of the state-of-the-art, the Cooling System is able to provide to the cold mass (~1 Ton) better thermal stability than few hundredths of degree within 24 hours (goal: 0.01K/day).
The present paper describes the Assembly, Integration and Verification phase (AIV) of the CARMENES-NIR channel Cooling System implemented at IAA-CSIC and later installation at CAHA 3.5m Telescope, thus the most relevant highlights being shown in terms of thermal performance.
The CARMENES NIR-channel Cooling System has been implemented by the IAA-CSIC through very fruitful collaboration and involvement of the ESO (European Southern Observatory) cryo-vacuum department with Jean-Louis Lizon as its head and main collaborator. The present work sets an important trend in terms of cryogenic systems for future E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) large-dimensioned instrumentation in astrophysics.
CARMENES is the new high-resolution high-stability spectrograph built for the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory (CAHA, Almería, Spain) by a consortium formed by German and Spanish institutions. This instrument is composed by two separated spectrographs: VIS channel (550-1050 nm) and NIR channel (950- 1700 nm). The NIR-channel spectrograph's responsible institution is the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, IAA-CSIC.
The contouring conditions have led CARMENES-NIR to be a schedule-driven project with a extremely tight plan. The operation start-up was mandatory to be before the end of 2015. This plays in contradiction to the very complex, calm-requiring tasks and development phases faced during the AIV, which has been fully designed and implemented at IAA through a very ambitious, zero-contingency plan. As a large cryogenic instrument, this plan includes necessarily a certain number cryo-vacuum cycles, this factor being the most important for the overall AIV duration. Indeed, each cryo-vacuum cycle of the NIR channel runs during 3 weeks. This plan has therefore been driven to minimize the amount of cryo-vacuum cycles.
Such huge effort has led the AIV at system level at IAA lab to be executed in 9 months from start to end -an astonishingly short duration for a large cryogenic, complex instrument like CARMENES NIR- which has been fully compliant with the final deadline of the installation of the NIR channel at CAHA 3.5m telescope. The detailed description of this planning, as well as the way how it was actually performed, is the main aim of the present paper.
CARMENES, the new Calar Alto spectrograph especially built for radial-velocity surveys of exoearths around M dwarfs, is a very complicated system. For reaching the goal of 1 m/s radial-velocity accuracy, it is appropriate not only to monitor stars with the best observing procedure, but to monitor also the parameters of the CARMENES subsystems and safely store all the engineer and science data. Here we describe the CARMENES data flow from the different subsystems, through the instrument control system and pipeline, to the virtual-observatory data server and astronomers.
A. Quirrenbach, P. Amado, J. Caballero, R. Mundt, A. Reiners, I. Ribas, W. Seifert, M. Abril, J. Aceituno, F. J. Alonso-Floriano, M. Ammler-von Eiff, R. Antona Jiménez, H. Anwand-Heerwart, M. Azzaro, F. Bauer, D. Barrado, S. Becerril, V. J. Béjar, D. Benítez, Z. Berdiñas, M. Cárdenas, E. Casal, A. Claret, J. Colomé, M. Cortés-Contreras, S. Czesla, M. Doellinger, S. Dreizler, C. Feiz, M. Fernández, D. Galadí, M. Gálvez-Ortiz, A. García-Piquer, M. García-Vargas, R. Garrido, L. Gesa, V. Gómez Galera, E. González Álvarez, J. González Hernández, U. Grözinger, J. Guàrdia, E. Guenther, E. de Guindos, J. Gutiérrez-Soto, H.-J. Hagen, A. Hatzes, P. Hauschildt, J. Helmling, T. Henning, D. Hermann, L. Hernández Castaño, E. Herrero, D. Hidalgo, G. Holgado, A. Huber, K. Huber, S. Jeffers, V. Joergens, E. de Juan, M. Kehr, R. Klein, M. Kürster, A. Lamert, S. Lalitha, W. Laun, U. Lemke, R. Lenzen, Mauro López del Fresno, B. López Martí, J. López-Santiago, U. Mall, H. Mandel, E. Martín, S. Martín-Ruiz, H. Martínez-Rodríguez, C. Marvin, R. Mathar, E. Mirabet, D. Montes, R. Morales Muñoz, A. Moya, V. Naranjo, A. Ofir, R. Oreiro, E. Pallé, J. Panduro, V.-M. Passegger, A. Pérez-Calpena, D. Pérez Medialdea, M. Perger, M. Pluto, A. Ramón, R. Rebolo, P. Redondo, S. Reffert, S. Reinhardt, P. Rhode, H.-W. Rix, F. Rodler, E. Rodríguez, C. Rodríguez-López, E. Rodríguez-Pérez, R.-R. Rohloff, A. Rosich, E. Sánchez-Blanco, M. Sánchez Carrasco, J. Sanz-Forcada, L. Sarmiento, S. Schäfer, J. Schiller, C. Schmidt, J. H. M. M. Schmitt, E. Solano, O. Stahl, C. Storz, J. Stürmer, J. Suárez, R. Ulbrich, G. Veredas, K. Wagner, J. Winkler, M. Zapatero Osorio, M. Zechmeister, F. Abellán de Paco, G. Anglada-Escudé, C. del Burgo, A. Klutsch, J. Lizon, M. López-Morales, J. Morales, M. A. C. Perryman, S. Tulloch, W. Xu
This paper gives an overview of the CARMENES instrument and of the survey that will be carried out with it
during the first years of operation. CARMENES (Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exoearths
with Near-infrared and optical Echelle Spectrographs) is a next-generation radial-velocity instrument
under construction for the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory by a consortium of eleven Spanish
and German institutions. The scientific goal of the project is conducting a 600-night exoplanet survey targeting
~ 300 M dwarfs with the completed instrument.
The CARMENES instrument consists of two separate echelle spectrographs covering the wavelength range
from 0.55 to 1.7 μm at a spectral resolution of R = 82,000, fed by fibers from the Cassegrain focus of the telescope.
The spectrographs are housed in vacuum tanks providing the temperature-stabilized environments necessary to
enable a 1 m/s radial velocity precision employing a simultaneous calibration with an emission-line lamp or with
a Fabry-Perot etalon. For mid-M to late-M spectral types, the wavelength range around 1.0 μm (Y band) is the
most important wavelength region for radial velocity work. Therefore, the efficiency of CARMENES has been
optimized in this range.
The CARMENES instrument consists of two spectrographs, one equipped with a 4k x 4k pixel CCD for
the range 0.55 - 1.05 μm, and one with two 2k x 2k pixel HgCdTe detectors for the range from 0.95 - 1.7μm.
Each spectrograph will be coupled to the 3.5m telescope with two optical fibers, one for the target, and one
for calibration light. The front end contains a dichroic beam splitter and an atmospheric dispersion corrector,
to feed the light into the fibers leading to the spectrographs. Guiding is performed with a separate camera;
on-axis as well as off-axis guiding modes are implemented. Fibers with octagonal cross-section are employed to
ensure good stability of the output in the presence of residual guiding errors. The fibers are continually actuated
to reduce modal noise. The spectrographs are mounted on benches inside vacuum tanks located in the coud´e
laboratory of the 3.5m dome. Each vacuum tank is equipped with a temperature stabilization system capable
of keeping the temperature constant to within ±0.01°C over 24 hours. The visible-light spectrograph will be
operated near room temperature, while the near-IR spectrograph will be cooled to ~ 140 K.
The CARMENES instrument passed its final design review in February 2013. The MAIV phase is currently
ongoing. First tests at the telescope are scheduled for early 2015. Completion of the full instrument is planned
for the fall of 2015. At least 600 useable nights have been allocated at the Calar Alto 3.5m Telescope for the
CARMENES survey in the time frame until 2018.
A data base of M stars (dubbed CARMENCITA) has been compiled from which the CARMENES sample can
be selected. CARMENCITA contains information on all relevant properties of the potential targets. Dedicated imaging, photometric, and spectroscopic observations are underway to provide crucial data on these stars that
are not available in the literature.
Andreas Quirrenbach, Pedro Amado, Walter Seifert, Miguel Sánchez Carrasco, Holger Mandel, Jose Caballero, Reinhard Mundt, Ignasi Ribas, Ansgar Reiners, Miguel Abril, Jesus Aceituno, Javier Alonso-Floriano, Matthias Ammler-von Eiff, Guillem Anglada-Escude, Regina Antona Jiménez, Heiko Anwand-Heerwart, David Barrado y Navascués, Santiago Becerril, Victor Bejar, Daniel Benitez, Concepcion Cardenas, Antonio Claret, Josep Colome, Miriam Cortés-Contreras, Stefan Czesla, Carlos del Burgo, Michaela Doellinger, R. Dorda, Stefan Dreizler, Carmen Feiz, Matilde Fernandez, David Galadi, Rafael Garrido, Jonay González Hernández, Josep Guardia, Eike Guenther, Enrique de Guindos, Juan Gutiérrez-Soto, Hans Hagen, Artie Hatzes, Peter Hauschildt, Jens Helmling, Thomas Henning, Enrique Herrero, Armin Huber, Klaus Huber, Sandra Jeffers, Viki Joergens, Enrique de Juan, M. Kehr, Alexis Klutsch, Martin Kürster, S. Lalitha, Werner Laun, Ulrike Lemke, Rainer Lenzen, Jean-Louis Lizon, Mauro López del Fresno, Mercedes López-Morales, Javier López-Santiago, Ulrich Mall, Eduardo Martin, Susana Martín-Ruiz, Eduard Mirabet, David Montes, Juan Carlos Morales, Rafael Morales Muñoz, Andres Moya, Vianak Naranjo, Raquel Oreiro, David Pérez Medialdea, Michael Pluto, Ovidio Rabaza, Alejandro Ramon, Rafael Rebolo, Sabine Reffert, Petra Rhode, Hans-Walter Rix, Florian Rodler, Eloy Rodríguez, Cristina Rodríguez López, Emilio Rodríguez Pérez, A. Rodriguez Trinidad, Ralf-Reiner Rohloff, Ernesto Sánchez-Blanco, Jorge Sanz-Forcada, Sebastian Schäfer, Jörg Schiller, Christof Schmidt, Jürgen Schmitt, Enrique Solano, Otmar Stahl, Clemens Storz, Julian Stürmer, Juan Carlos Suarez, Ulrich Thiele, Rainer Ulbrich, Manuela Vidal-Dasilva, Karl Wagner, Johannes Winkler, Wenli Xu, Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio, Mathias Zechmeister
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.
KEYWORDS: Control systems, Near infrared, Data processing, Observatories, Telescopes, Calibration, Astronomy, Computer programming, Telecommunications, Automatic control
The overall purpose of the CARMENES instrument is to perform high-precision measurements of radial velocities of
late-type stars with long-term stability. CARMENES will be installed in 2014 at the 3.5 m telescope in the German-
Spanish Astronomical Center at Calar Alto observatory (CAHA, Spain) and will be equipped with two spectrographs in
the near-infrared and visible windows. The technology involved in such instrument represents a challenge at all levels.
The instrument coordination and management is handled by the Instrument Control System (ICS), which is responsible
of carrying out the operations of the different subsystems and providing a tool to operate the instrument from low to high
user interaction level. The main goal of the ICS and the CARMENES control layer architecture is to maximize the
instrument efficiency by reducing time overheads and by operating it in an integrated manner. The ICS implements the
CARMENES operational design. A description of the ICS architecture and the application programming interfaces for
low- and high-level communication is given. Internet Communications Engine is the technology selected to implement
most of the interface protocols.
This paper examines the reasons for building a compiled language embedded on an instrument software. Starting from
scratch and step by step, all the compiler stages of an ANSI-C like language are analyzed, simplified and implemented.
The result is a compiler and a runner with a small footprint that can be easily transferable and embedded into an
instrument software. Both have about 75 KBytes when similar solutions have hundreds. Finally, the possibilities that
arise from embedding the runner inside an instrument software are explored.
CARMENES has been proposed as a next-generation instrument for the 3.5m Calar Alto Telescope. Its objective is
finding habitable exoplanets around M dwarfs through radial velocity measurements (m/s level) in the near-infrared.
Consequently, the NIR spectrograph is highly constraint regarding thermal/mechanical requirements. Indeed, the
requirements used for the present study limit the thermal stability to ±0.01K (within year period) over a working
temperature of 243K in order to minimise radial velocity drifts. This can be achieved by implementing a solution based
on several temperature-controlled rooms (TCR), whose smallest room encloses the vacuum vessel which houses the
spectrograph's optomechanics.
Nevertheless, several options have been taken into account to minimise the complexity of the thermal design: 1) Large
thermal inertia of the system, where, given a thermal instability of the environment (typically, ±0.1K), the optomechanical
system remains stable within ±0.01K in the long run; 2) Environment thermal control, where thermal
stability is ensured by controlling the temperature of the environment surrounding the vacuum vessel.
The present article also includes the comprehensive transient-state thermal analyses which have been implemented in
order to make the best choice, as well as to give important inputs for the thermal layout of the instrument.
CARMENES (Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exo-earths with Near-infrared and optical
Echelle Spectrographs) is a next-generation instrument to be built for the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto
Observatory by a consortium of Spanish and German institutions. Conducting a five-year exoplanet survey
targeting ~ 300 M stars with the completed instrument is an integral part of the project. The CARMENES
instrument consists of two separate spectrographs covering the wavelength range from 0.52 to 1.7 μm at a spectral
resolution of R = 85, 000, fed by fibers from the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. The spectrographs are housed
in a temperature-stabilized environment in vacuum tanks, to enable a 1m/s radial velocity precision employing
a simultaneous ThAr calibration.
KEYWORDS: Databases, Digital signal processing, Embedded systems, Control systems, Telecommunications, Signal processing, Computer programming, C++, Systems engineering, Error control coding
The UDP (User Defined Program) system is a scripting framework for controlling and extending instrumentation
software. It has been specially designed for air- and space-borne instruments with flexibility, error control, reuse,
automation, traceability and ease of development as its main objectives. All the system applications are connected
through a database containing the valid script commands including descriptive information and source code. The system
can be adapted to different projects without changes in the framework tools, thus achieving great level of flexibility and
reusability. The UDP system comprises: an embedded system for the execution of scripts by the instrument software;
automatic tools for aiding in the creation, modification, documentation and tracing of new scripting language commands;
and interfaces for the creation of scripts and execution control.
In this work, it is described the Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment, IMaX, one of the three postfocal instruments of
the Sunrise mission. The Sunrise project consists on a stratospheric balloon with a 1 m aperture telescope, which will fly
from the Antarctica within the NASA Long Duration Balloon Program.
IMaX will provide vector magnetograms of the solar surface with a spatial resolution of 70 m. This data is relevant
for understanding how the magnetic fields emerge in the solar surface, how they couple the photospheric base with the
million degrees of temperature of the solar corona and which are the processes that are responsible of the generation of
such an immense temperatures.
To meet this goal IMaX should work as a high sensitivity polarimeter, high resolution spectrometer and a near
diffraction limited imager. Liquid Crystal Variable Retarders will be used as polarization modulators taking advantage of
the optical retardation induced by application of low electric fields and avoiding mechanical mechanisms. Therefore, the
interest of these devices for aerospace applications is envisaged. The spectral resolution required will be achieved by
using a LiNbO3 Fabry-Perot etalon in double pass configuration as spectral filter before the two CCDs detectors. As well
phase-diversity techniques will be implemented in order to improve the image quality.
Nowadays, IMaX project is in the detailed design phase before fabrication, integration, assembly and verification.
This paper briefly describes the current status of the instrument and the technical solutions developed to fulfil the
scientific requirements.
The SUNRISE balloon project is a high-resolution mission to study solar magnetic fields able to resolve the critical scale of 100 km in the solar photosphere, or about one photon mean free path. The Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX) is one of the three instruments that will fly in the balloon and will receive light from the 1m aperture telescope of the mission. IMaX should take advantage of the 15 days of uninterrupted solar observations and the exceptional resolution to help clarifying our understanding of the
small-scale magnetic concentrations that pervade the solar surface. For this, IMaX should act as a diffraction limited imager able to carry out spectroscopic analysis with resolutions in the 50.000-100.000 range and capable to perform polarization measurements. The solutions adopted by the project to achieve all these three demanding goals are explained in this article. They include the use of Liquid Crystal Variable Retarders for the polarization modulation, one
LiNbO3 etalon in double pass and two modern CCD detectors that allow for the application of phase diversity techniques by slightly changing the focus of one of the CCDs.
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