SOAR TechnicalDescription
SOAR Subsystems | SOAR Instruments
The Enclosure
Achieves precise heat control by means of forced ventilation through a small dome area, set above a small building.
Unusually enclosed design promotes highly accurate telescope tracking through its control of wind buffeting.
The building was designed in the US and constructed by local Chilean contractors.
The dome was built in Brazil, using fiberglass panels from a US firm.
< 2 arcsec rms blind pointing.
< 0.2 arcsec rms offsetting error.
< 0.2 arcsec rms tracking jitter.
Throughout 2002, a 10-inch telescope mounted on the side of the main telescope was used to debug and verify pointing and tracking.
4.1m primary mirror.
Very high optical quality - 17 nm rms surface.
Low thermal mass.
Primary mirror is 4 inches thick
Active optics system.
120-actuator control of primary.
Secondary on active hexapod.
Image analyzer permanently mounted at one instrument port.
Rapid tip-tilt correction at all foci.
Tip-tilt tertiary mirror.
Many instruments permanently mounted.
2 Nasmyth clusters, 3 instruments each.
2 Folded-cassegrain foci.
Rapid selection between instruments.
60 seconds to switch.
At least two instruments always ready.
Operated by NOAO for the SOAR consortium.
Represents most of NOAO contribution to project cost.
Remote observing from MSU campus in East Lansing, MI.
From Remote Observation Room in BPS building.
Near-IR imaging spectrograph built by Ohio State University.
PI: Darren Depoy.
On loan to NOAO.
1024x1024 HgCdTe array sensitive between 0.95 and 2.4 microns.
Intended as SOAR's IR spectrometer.
Spectroscopy in J,H or K with R=1200, 3000.
Cross-dispersed mode covering IJHK simultaneously at R~1200.
Also provides imaging with large (0.14 or 0.35arcsec) pixels over 1.3 or 3.3 arcmin FOV.
Is being slightly modified for use on SOAR (installing narrower slit).
Goodman Spectrograph
High-throughput optical spectrograph.
High sensitivity in near-UV down to atmospheric cutoff.
Built by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
PI: Chris Clemens.
Detectors: two UV-optimized 2Kx4K MIT/Lincoln Lab CCDs.
High-throughput Volume-Phase Holographic (VPH) gratings.
Up to R=1400.
Choice of long slit or aperture plate.
Designed for rapid readout mode for monitoring short-period variability.
Near-IR imager combining wide field with high angular resolution.
Built by Michigan State University with substantial participation from Brazil.
PI: Ed Loh.
Initially two 2048x2048 HgCdTe detectors.
Two more detectors being added in 2005 for 4096x4096 pixels total.
1-2.5 micron sensitivity.
2 magnifications.
3x3 arcmin2 FOV with 0.043 arcsec pixels.
Matched to SOAR's K-band diffraction limit.
5x5 arcmin2 FOV with 0.073 arcsec pixels.
Integral-Field, bench-mounted optical spectrometer.
Built by University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
PI: Jacques Lepine.
Integral-field unit (IFU) fed from a pickoff mirror near telescope focus.
Three interchangeable angular scales via interchangeable fore-optics in telescope focal plane.
Lenslets in 30x50 grid.
Coupled by a 5m-long optical fiber to spectrometer mounted on telescope azimuth structure.
Detector: two red-optimized 2Kx4K MIT/Lincoln Lab CCDs.
Roughly 3 CCD pixels/fiber.
R = 1000 - 40,000.
Existing high resolution (R=100,000) near-IR (1-5 micron) echelle spectrograph.
Built by NOAO
PI: Ken Hinkle.
Shared with Gemini South telescope.