Abstract Details

Name: Vipin Kumar
Affiliation: PRL, Ahmedabad
Conference ID: ASI2019_229
Title : Assembly-Integration-Testing (AIT) and Characterization of Mt. Abu Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera-Pathfinder (MFOSC-P)
Authors and Co-Authors : Vipin Kumar, Mohan Lal, Ankita Patel, Vaibhav Dixit, S.N. Mathur and Mudit K. Srivastava
Abstract Type : Poster
Abstract Category : Instrumentation and Techniques
Abstract : Mount Abu Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera-Pathfinder (MFOSC-P) is an imager-spectrograph to be commissioned on PRL 1.2m telescope at Mt. Abu. The instrument has been designed and developed in-house to provide imaging as well as spectroscopy capabilities in visible wavelengths. Imaging is provided for ~6X6 arc-min^2 field of view on a 1K X 1K Andor CCD detector, with a sampling of 3 pixels/arc-second. The optics has been designed to provide ‘seeing limited imaging’ in astronomy standard Bessell’s B, V, R and I filters. Three modes of slit limited spectroscopy with gratings can achieve the resolutions of 2000,1000 and 500 around 6500, 5200 and 6500 angstroms respectively for 1 arc-second of slit width. Three plane reflection gratings are used for this purpose. MFOSC-P is conceptualized as a general user's instrument to choose any of the observing modes with sufficient ease during the operation. The instrument is currently being assembled in the laboratory with first on-telescope sky tests are scheduled in near future. Subsequent to assembly-integration-testing (AIT) of the instrument several characterization tests are planned to ensure the designed performance of the instrument. These include both the laboratory and on-sky characterization of image quality, efficiency and resolutions measurements, detector and noise characteristics measurements, performance evaluation of calibration optics, motion control and control system tests etc. We shall be presenting the AIT procedure as well as the laboratory and on-sky performance of the instrument in the meeting. At the time of writing this abstract the optical chain of the instrument has been successfully assembled and verified in the laboratory for its image quality.