KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Spectrographs, Calibration, Fabry Perot interferometers, Observatories, Control systems, Sensors, Control software, Equipment, Domes
MARVEL is a new facility at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma) which comprises an array of four 0.8m telescopes, each feeding via fibre link into a single high-resolution spectrograph. The facility will provide dedicated target vetting and follow-up capability to support large exoplanet surveys through radial velocity measurements with precision at the metre-per-second level. The observatory site, with four new domes and a standalone stabilised spectrograph building, will soon be complete and ready for hardware installation and commissioning. Here we present an overview of the facility and a status update on several component subsystems: the telescope hardware, control software, and scheduling software; the fibre injection units at each telescope; the optical and mechanical design and tolerances of the spectrograph and vacuum vessel; the calibration system hardware and calibration strategies; and the progress in development of the instrument’s data reduction pipeline.
The MARVEL instrument is an array of four 80cm telescopes feeding a high-resolution echelle spectrograph designed to provide high precision radial-velocity measurements and is being led by KU Leuven (Belgium). The UK ATC is responsible for the delivery of the detector work package; a fully characterised STA1600LN optical CCD housed in a custom cryostat. As a large image area detector, the STA1600LN has been used in a variety of astronomy applications for imaging. This paper will detail the characterisation testing done by the UK ATC Electronics and Detectors group, to verify that this detector meets the requirements for a high-resolution spectrograph of this type. Testing includes measures of read noise, dark current, and the effects of the dither clocking on detector performance and stability, among others.
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