Lessons learnt during the design, integration and commissioning of the Southern African Large Telescope’s Fiber Instrument Feed and its guidance probe are presented along with initial on-sky performance results. Advances over the original design include enhanced target acquisition efficiency by including an imaging camera directly on the fiber-positioning stage, use of linear optical encoders on all motion stages, thermally compensated designs, a guidance probe optical design with much improved throughput as well as a new non-contact metrology process to accurately model the guider. The system has since been successfully used in commissioning the SALT High-Resolution Spectrograph.

Date Published: 7 August 2014
PDF: 17 pages
Proc. SPIE 9151, Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation, 915121 (7 August 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2055943

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9151:
Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation
Ramón Navarro; Colin R. Cunningham; Allison A. Barto, Editor(s)