Our team is designing and realizing the fiber links from which two spectrographs will operate at the second unit of the Very Large Telescope. GIRAFFE is an intermediate resolution spectrograph which has access to the entire field of the Nasmyth focus and is equipped with three fiber links producing alternately 132 spectra at the same time, 15 tri- dimensional spectra or 300 spectra for a single object. The last fiber link is intended to provide simultaneously with GIRAFFE, the observation of 8 objects at a higher resolution with UVES. All these observation modes will be available at VLT by the end of 2001. The specific development of the fiber links includes the systematic use of simultaneous calibration. This paper sums up the design of each mode and describes the specific developments required to optimize the performances of the fiber system. A full description of GIRAFFE, of its fiber link and of the related scientific programs is available at http://giraobs.obspm.fr.

Date Published: 16 August 2000
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 4008, Optical and IR Telescope Instrumentation and Detectors, (16 August 2000); doi: 10.1117/12.395508

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4008:
Optical and IR Telescope Instrumentation and Detectors
Masanori Iye; Alan F. M. Moorwood, Editor(s)