Jean-Philippe Amans

The 4MOST instrument concept overview

The 4MOST[1] instrument is a concept for a wide-field, fibre-fed high multiplex spectroscopic instrument facility on the ESO VISTA telescope designed to perform a massive (initially >25x106 spectra in 5 years) combined all-sky public survey. The main science drivers are: Gaia follow up of chemo-dynamical structure of the Milky Way, stellar radial velocities, parameters and abundances, chemical tagging; eROSITA follow up of cosmology with x-ray clusters of galaxies, X-ray AGN/galaxy evolution to z~5, Galactic X-ray sources and resolving the Galactic edge; Euclid/LSST/SKA and other survey follow up of Dark Energy, Galaxy evolution and transients. The surveys will be undertaken simultaneously requiring: highly advanced targeting and scheduling software, also comprehensive data reduction and analysis tools to produce high-level data products. The instrument will allow simultaneous observations of ~1600 targets at R~5,000 from 390-900nm and ~800 targets at R<18,000 in three channels between ~395-675nm (channel bandwidth: 45nm blue, 57nm green and 69nm red) over a hexagonal field of view of ~ 4.1 degrees. The initial 5-year 4MOST survey is currently expect to start in 2020. We provide and overview of the 4MOST systems: optomechanical, control, data management and operations concepts; and initial performance estimates.

4MOST-4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope

4MOST is a wide-field, high-multiplex spectroscopic survey facility under development for the VISTA telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Its main science drivers are in the fields of galactic archeology, high-energy physics, galaxy evolution and cosmology. 4MOST will in particular provide the spectroscopic complements to the large area surveys coming from space missions like Gaia, eROSITA, Euclid, and PLATO and from ground-based facilities like VISTA, VST, DES, LSST and SKA. The 4MOST baseline concept features a 2.5 degree diameter field-of-view with ~2400 fibres in the focal surface that are configured by a fibre positioner based on the tilting spine principle. The fibres feed two types of spectrographs; ~1600 fibres go to two spectrographs with resolution R<5000 (λ~390-930 nm) and ~800 fibres to a spectrograph with R>18,000 (λ~392-437 nm and 515-572 nm and 605-675 nm). Both types of spectrographs are fixed-configuration, three-channel spectrographs. 4MOST will have an unique operations concept in which 5 year public surveys from both the consortium and the ESO community will be combined and observed in parallel during each exposure, resulting in more than 25 million spectra of targets spread over a large fraction of the southern sky. The 4MOST Facility Simulator (4FS) was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of this observing concept. 4MOST has been accepted for implementation by ESO with operations expected to start by the end of 2020. This paper provides a top-level overview of the 4MOST facility, while other papers in these proceedings provide more detailed descriptions of the instrument concept[1], the instrument requirements development[2], the systems engineering implementation[3], the instrument model[4], the fibre positioner concepts[5], the fibre feed[6], and the spectrographs[7].

ATLAS: the E-ELT laser tomographic adaptive optics system

ATLAS is a generic Laser Tomographic AO (LTAO) system for the E-ELT. Based on modular, relatively simple, and yet innovative concepts, it aims at providing diffraction limited images in the near infra-red for a close to 100 percent sky coverage.

Persee: a nulling demonstrator with real-time correction of external disturbances

Nulling interferometry is one of the most promising methods to study habitable extrasolar systems. Several projects, such as Darwin, TPF, Pegase, FKSI or Aladdin, are currently considered and supported by R&D programs. One of the main issues of nulling interferometry is the feasibility of a stable polychromatic null despite the presence of significant disturbances, induced by vibrations, atmospheric turbulence on the ground or satellite drift for spaceborne missions. To reduce cost and complexity of the whole system, it is necessary to optimize not only the control loop performance at platform and payload levels, but also their interaction. In this goal, it was decided in 2006 to build a laboratory demonstrator named Persee. Persee is mostly funded by CNES and built by a consortium including CNES, IAS, LESIA, OCA, ONERA and TAS. After a definition phase in 2006, the implementation of the sub-systems has now begun and the integration near Paris by GIS-PHASE (LESIA, ONERA and GEPI) is planned in 2009. This paper details the main objectives of PERSEE, describes the definition of the bench, presents the current status and reports results obtained with the first sub-systems.

PERSEE, the dynamic nulling demonstrator: Recent progress on the cophasing system

Spectral characterization of exo-planets can be made by nulling interferometers. In this context, several projects have been proposed such as DARWIN, FKSI, PEGASE and TPF, space-based, and ALADDIN, ground-based. To stabilize the beams with the required nanometric accuracy, a cophasing system is required, made of piston/tip/tilt actuators on each arm and piston/tip-tilt sensors. The demonstration of the feasibility of such a cophasing system is a central issue. In this goal, a laboratory breadboard named PERSEE is under integration. Main goals of PERSEE are the demonstration of a polychromatic null from 1.65 μm to 3.3 μm with a 10-4 rejection rate and a 10-5 stability despite the introduction of realistic perturbations, the study of the interfaces with formation-flying spacecrafts and the joint operation of the cophasing system with the nuller. We describe the principle of the cophasing system made by Onera, operating in the [0.8 - 1] μm (tip/tilt) and [0.8 - 1.5] μm (piston) spectral bands. Emphasis is put on the piston sensor and its close integration with the nuller.

EAGLE: an MOAO fed multi-IFU working in the NIR on the E-ELT

EAGLE is an instrument for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). EAGLE will be installed at the Gravity Invariant Focal Station of the E-ELT, covering a field of view of 50 square arcminutes. Its main scientific drivers are the physics and evolution of high-redshift galaxies, the detection and characterization of first-light objects and the physics of galaxy evolution from stellar archaeology. These key science programs, generic to all ELT projects and highly complementary to JWST, require 3D spectroscopy on a limited (~20) number of targets, full near IR coverage up to 2.4 micron and an image quality significantly sharper than the atmospheric seeing. The EAGLE design achieves these requirements with innovative, yet simple, solutions and technologies already available or under the final stages of development. EAGLE relies on Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO) which is being demonstrated in the laboratory and on sky. This paper provides a summary of the phase A study instrument design.

New generation multichannel subtractive double pass for EST imaging spectropolarimetry

Any future solar telescope project should incorporate an imaging spectrometer. For the future EST (European Solar Telescope) the Observatoire de Paris offers an imaging spectro-porarimetry instrument: a new generation of MSDP. To validate this new generation, we develop a beam slicer prototype that will be tested and validated on optical bench and on existing telescopes. The study assesses the performance gain of such an instrument on a solar 4m class telescope. We present opto-mechanical solutions of a new beam splitter and its implementation in EST.

Mechanical design of SST-GATE, a dual-mirror telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project aims to create the next generation Very High Energy (VHE) gamma-ray telescope array. It will be devoted to the observation of gamma rays over a wide band of energy, from a few tens of GeV to more than 100 TeV. Two sites are foreseen to view the whole sky where about 100 telescopes, composed of three different classes, related to the specific energy region to be investigated, will be installed. Among these, the Small Size class of Telescopes, SSTs, are devoted to the highest energy region, to beyond 100 TeV. Due to the large number of SSTs, their unit cost is an important parameter. At the Observatoire de Paris, we have designed a prototype of a Small Size Telescope named SST-GATE, based on the dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder optical formula, which has never before been implemented in the design of a telescope. Over the last two years, we developed a mechanical design for SST-GATE from the optical and preliminary mechanical designs made by the University of Durham. The integration of this telescope is currently in progress. Since the early stages of mechanical design of SST-GATE, finite element method has been used employing shape and topology optimization techniques to help design several elements of the telescope. This allowed optimization of the mechanical stiffness/mass ratio, leading to a lightweight and less expensive mechanical structure. These techniques and the resulting mechanical design are detailed in this paper. We will also describe the finite element analyses carried out to calculate the mechanical deformations and the stresses in the structure under observing and survival conditions.

High resolution spectrograph for the 4MOST facility

4MOST (4-metre Multi-Object Spectrograph Telescope) is a wide field and high multiplex fibre-fed spectroscopic facility continuously running a public survey on one of ESOs 4-metre telescopes (NTT or VISTA). It is currently undergoing a concept study and comprises a multi-object (300) high resolution (20 000) spectrograph whose purpose is to provide detailed chemical information in two wavelength ranges (395-456.5 nm and 587-673 nm). It will complement the data produced by ESAs space mission Gaia to form an unprecedented galactic-archaeology picture of the Milky Way as the result of the public survey. Building on the developments carried out for the GYES1 instrument on the Canada- France-Hawaii Telescope in 2010, the spectrograph is intended as being athermal and not featuring any motorised parts for high reliability and minimum maintenance, thereby allowing it to operate every night for five years. In addition to the fixed configuration which allows fine-tuning the spectrograph to a precise need, it features a dual-arm architecture with volume-phase holographic gratings to achieve the required dispersion at a maximum efficiency in each channel. By combining high yield time-wise and photon-wise, the spectrograph is expected to deliver more than a million spectra and make the most out of the selected 4-metre telescope.

MOSAIC optical relay module: optical design, performance, and flexure analysis

The Optical Relay Module of the MOSAIC multiple-object spectrograph is used to relay 400-1800nm light picked off from the ELT focal plane to either a fibre-based integral field unit or a natural guide star wavefront sensor. Here we present the preliminary optical design offering a telecentric exit beam with a focal-ratio of F/17.718 and the opto-mechanical analysis of flexures with a study of the impact in the optical layout performances such as: deviation of the PSF centroid, tip-tilt of the image focal plane, variations of the wavefront error, optical quality and pupil wandering at the deformable mirror position.