| Name: | Bhaveshkumar Mistry |
| Affiliation: | Physical Research Laboratory |
| Conference ID : | ASI2024_576 |
| Title : | Opto-mechanical design and control system aspects of ProtoPol – a medium resolution echelle spectro-polarimeter for PRLTelescope |
| Authors : | Bhavesh Kumar Mistry, Ankita Patel, Mudit K. Srivastava, Arijit Maiti, Vaibhav Dixit, Kevikumar Lad and Vipin Kumar |
| Authors Affiliation: | 1. Bhavesh Kumar Mistry, Ankita Patel, Mudit K. Srivastava, Arijit Maiti, Vaibhav Dixit, Kevikumar Lad (Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad 380009, India)
2. Vipin Kumar (University of Cologne, Germany) |
| Mode of Presentation: | Poster |
| Abstract Category : | Facilities, Technologies and Data science |
| Abstract : | ProtoPol is a medium resolution (R~7000) spectro-polarimeter in visible range (390-940nm) for PRL 1.2m and 2.5m telescopes which has been developed completely with commercially available off-the-shelf components. ProtoPol was initially conceived as a prototype for the currently under design M-FOSC-EP (Mt. Abu Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera-Echelle Polarimeter) instrument, however it was later elevated as a full-fledged instrument for both the PRL 1.2m and 2.5m telescopes. ProtoPol has been developed on the concept of echelle and cross-disperser gratings to record the cross-dispersed spectra in multiple orders on a commercially available off-the-shelf 1K X 1K CCD detector system. Its mechanical system and interfaces for 1.2m and 2.5m telescopes are developed under constraints as posed by the volume, mass, center-of-gravity and others requirements of the telescope mounting ports. The mechanical system of ProtoPol has also been developed to cater the requirements of precise optical alignment of various optical sub-systems such as polarimeter sub-section, spectrometer section, calibration unit etc. Apart from detector operations, ProtoPol also requires the automation of its various sub-systems such as calibration lamps, field viewing optics, half-wave plate rotation, cross-disperser gratings positioning etc. These automations have been provided by an in-house developed instrument control system and control software. The instrument control system is developed around two Arcus make motion controllers and commercially available stepper motor drivers. It can operate up to eight stepper motors in various modes along with their limits and encoder feedbacks. It also controls the functioning of various calibration lamps and switches. The user’s interface is developed in Python and has provision for both the high-level instrument operation and low-level engineering interface. In this poster, we shall present the opto-mechanical designs of ProtoPol emphasizing the role of each sub-systems. We shall also present the hardware and software aspects of instrument control system. |
