Abstract Details

Name: Mudit Srivastava
Affiliation: Physical Research Laboratory
Conference ID: ASI2020_94
Title : Design and Development of Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (FOSC) Instruments for PRL Telescopes
Authors and Co-Authors : Mudit K. Srivastava, Vipin Kumar, Vaibhav Dixit, Ankita Patel and Arvind Rajpuhohit
Abstract Type : Invited
Abstract Category : Instrumentation and Techniques
Abstract : Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (FOSC) series of instruments have been a major workhorse for most of the observatories around the world, due to their ability to provide imaging, spectroscopy and (in some cases) polarimetry within a single optical chain. Need for FOSC type of instrument was felt for a long time on PRL existing 1.2m Optical-near Infrared (NIR) telescope at Gurushikhar, Mt. Abu as well as for the upcoming PRL 2.5m diameter optical-NIR telescope at Mt. Abu. It is against this backdrop we undertook a project to develop FOSC instrumentation program for PRL telescopes. Earlier this year in February, we have successfully commissioned a FOSC instrument named - MFOSC-P: Mt. Abu Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera-Pathfinder on PRL 1.2m telescope. MFOSC-P is a completely indigenous instrument, fully designed and developed in-house between 2015-2018. MFOSC-P offers both seeing limited imaging in Bessell’s B, V, R, I and H-alpha filters and spectroscopy (with resolutions of 2000, 1000 and 500) in the visible waveband (4500-8500 angstroms). MFOSC-P instrumentation team is now involved in the design of another extended FOSC instrument for upcoming 2.5m PRL telescope. This new instrument is an extended version of FOSC instrumentation having the capability of intermediate-resolution spectro-polarimeter (resolution ~ 12000) as well. The design and development aspect of MFOSC-P was presented in last ASI meeting in February-2019. In the talk, I shall describe the commissioning and early results from the of MFOSC-P instrument. I shall also discuss the need, requirements, design and expected performance of our next FOSC instrument for upcoming PRL 2.5m telescope.