Optical design of a Coudé-Train for a stable and efficient simultaneous feeding of the ESPRESSO spectrograph from the four VLT telescopes

Alexandre Cabral; João Coelho; Manuel Abreu; Manuel Monteiro; Ricardo Gomes; Pedro Santos; António Oliveira; Gerardo Ávila; Bernard-Alexis Delabre; Denis Mégevand; Filippo Zerbi; Paolo Di Marcantonio; Christophe Lovis; Nuno C. Santos

doi:10.1117/12.2026179

18 November 2013 Optical design of a Coudé-Train for a stable and efficient simultaneous feeding of the ESPRESSO spectrograph from the four VLT telescopes

Alexandre Cabral, João Coelho, Manuel Abreu, Manuel Monteiro, Ricardo Gomes, Pedro Santos, António Oliveira, Gerardo Ávila, Bernard-Alexis Delabre, Denis Mégevand, Filippo Zerbi, Paolo Di Marcantonio, Christophe Lovis, Nuno C. Santos

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8785, 8th Iberoamerican Optics Meeting and 11th Latin American Meeting on Optics, Lasers, and Applications; 87850L (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2026179
Event: 8th Ibero American Optics Meeting/11th Latin American Meeting on Optics, Lasers, and Applications, 2013, Porto, Portugal

Abstract

ESPRESSO is a fibre-fed, cross-dispersed, high-resolution, echelle spectrograph. Being the first purpose of ESPRESSO to develop a competitive and innovative high-resolution spectrograph to fully exploit the VLT (Very Large Telescope), and allow new science, it is important to develop the VLT array concept bearing in mind the need to obtain the highest stability, while preserving its best efficiency. This high-resolution ultra-stable spectrograph will be installed in the VLT at the Combined Coudé Laboratory (CCL), fed by four Coudé Trains, which brings the light from the Nasmyth platforms of the four VLT Unit Telescopes to the CCL. ESPRESSO will combine the efficiency of modern echelle spectrograph with extreme radial-velocity precision. It will achieve a gain of two magnitudes with respect to its predecessor HARPS, and the instrumental radial-velocity precision will be improved to reach cm/s level. Thanks to its ability of combining incoherently the light of the 4 UTs, ESPRESSO will offer new possibilities in various fields of astronomy. The Coudé Train is composed of a set of prisms and lenses to deliver a pupil and an image in the CCL, including an Atmospheric Dispersion Compensator. In this paper, we present the optical design of the Coudé Trains, the opto-mechanical concept, the required control, the main characteristics and expected performances.

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Alexandre Cabral, João Coelho, Manuel Abreu, Manuel Monteiro, Ricardo Gomes, Pedro Santos, António Oliveira, Gerardo Ávila, Bernard-Alexis Delabre, Denis Mégevand, Filippo Zerbi, Paolo Di Marcantonio, Christophe Lovis, and Nuno C. Santos "Optical design of a Coudé-Train for a stable and efficient simultaneous feeding of the ESPRESSO spectrograph from the four VLT telescopes", Proc. SPIE 8785, 8th Iberoamerican Optics Meeting and 11th Latin American Meeting on Optics, Lasers, and Applications, 87850L (18 November 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2026179

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