EMIR electronics and mechanism control

Gago, Fernando; Diaz, Jose J.; Redondo, Pablo; Gonzalez, Carlos; Beigbeder, Francis; Chapon, Yvan; Garzon, Francisco; Patron, Jesus
Bibliographical reference

Ground-based Instrumentation for Astronomy. Edited by Alan F. M. Moorwood and Iye Masanori. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 5492, pp. 1280-1289 (2004).

Advertised on:
9
2004
Number of authors
8
IAC number of authors
7
Citations
3
Refereed citations
0
Description
EMIR is a multiobject intermediate resolution near infrared (1.0-2.5 microns) spectrograph with image capabilities to be mounted on the 10m Gran Telescopio de Canarias (GTC), located on the Spanish island of La Palma. This paper shows an overview of the EMIR electronics and mechanism control. First, a description of the detector (a Hawaii-2 array) electronics is given, which involves the use of commercial components (resistors, capacitors and operational amplifiers) working under cryogenic conditions (around 77K). This paper describes the particularities of the cold electronics, showing the problems found and the way to solve them. Preliminary results of the detector characterization are also presented in this paper. Secondly, an overview of the different mechanisms of the instrument is presented. They are cryogenic mechanisms with pretty stringent positioning requirements. The technological solutions used to meet the tight control requirements will be described.