Astrophysical instrumentation

Visible instrumentation

From its origins, the Instrumentation Division has participated in the construction of instrumentation to detect and analyze light in the visible range of the spectrum. Cameras, spectrographs, polarization analyzers, optical fibers fed systems, among others, have been designed, built, integrated and verified in our facilities.

  • Several CSOA activities
    Advanced Optical Systems Center (CSOA)
    The Advanced Optical Systems Center (CSOA) is an unique infrastructure in Spain for the manufacture of high quality optical elements. This cutting-edge technology is a rising value and, with the necessary requirements in Astrophysics, it is available to very few centers in the world.
    José Alfonso
    López Aguerri
  • Infografía 3D de HARMONI
    HARMONI
    HARMONI is one of the three ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) first light scientific instruments. It is a visible and near-infrared (0.47 to 2.45 µm) integral field spectrograph, providing the ELT's core spectroscopic capability, over a range of resolving powers from R (≡λ/Δλ) ~4000 to R~20000.
    María Begoña
    García Lorenzo
    Evencio
    Mediavilla Gradolph
  • Vista superior de ESPRESSO ya instalado
    ESPRESSO - Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observation
    ESPRESSO is a fiber-fed, cross-dispersed, high resolution, Echelle spectrograph which can be operated with one or up to 4 Unit Telescopes (UTs) of ESO’s VLT.
    Rafael
    Rebolo López
  • OSIRIS a punto de ensamblarse en el rotador del GTC
    OSIRIS - Optical System for Imaging low Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy
    OSIRIS is a camera and intermediate spectrograph in operation in the GTC telescope. OSIRIS has various observation modes: direct image, wide slit and multi-slit, which can be combined with charge shuffling and tunable filters. It includes a focal plane mask loader for multi-object spectroscopy.
    Jorge
    Cepa Nogue
  • WEAVE en el telescopio William Herschel
    WEAVE - WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer
    New multi-object spectrograph planned for the 4.2m William Herschell Telescope (WHT) located in the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, on La Palma island.
    José Alfonso
    López Aguerri
  • Optical bench
    HORuS - High Optical Resolution Spectrograph
    High-resolution spectrograph for the 10-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) based on components from UES, a spectrograph which was in use at the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) between 1992 and 2001.
    Carlos
    Allende Prieto