ESPRESSO Coudé-Train: ESO's VLT working as 16-metre telescope

Alexandre Cabral; Manuel Abreu; João Coelho; Gerardo Ávila; Marco Riva; Denis Mégevand; Nuno C. Santos; Francesco Pepe

doi:10.1117/12.2527260

3 October 2019 ESPRESSO Coudé-Train: ESO's VLT working as 16-metre telescope

Alexandre Cabral, Manuel Abreu, João Coelho, Gerardo Ávila, Marco Riva, Denis Mégevand, Nuno C. Santos, Francesco Pepe

Proceedings Volume 11207, Fourth International Conference on Applications of Optics and Photonics; 112070V (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2527260
Event: IV International Conference on Applications of Optics and Photonics (AOP 2019), 2019, Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

ESPRESSO is a fibre-fed, cross-dispersed, high-resolution, echelle spectrograph developed to fully exploit the European Southern Observatory VLT (Very Large Telescope), and it was open to the astronomical community at the end of 2018. This spectrograph was installed at the Combined Coudé Laboratory (CCL) of the VLT, fed by four Coudé Trains, which bring the light to the CCL from the Nasmyth platforms of the four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes. With all four Telescopes combining their light-collecting power to feed a single instrument, the ESPRESSO Coudé Train effectively transforms the VLT into the largest optical telescope in the world in terms of collecting area. The Coudé Train is composed of a set of prisms and lenses delivering a pupil and an image to the CCL, up to 70 m away, including an Atmospheric Dispersion Compensator. The use of only refractive optics, namely Total Internal Reflection prisms, has the advantage of the inherent higher throughput, especially in the blue region of the spectrum. With these complex optics, ESPRESSO can either collect the light from up to all four Unit Telescopes together, or alternatively receive light from any one of the telescopes independently, allowing for more flexible usage of observing time. In this paper, we present the ESPRESSO Coudé Train concept, the design and the implementation on the VLT.

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Alexandre Cabral, Manuel Abreu, João Coelho, Gerardo Ávila, Marco Riva, Denis Mégevand, Nuno C. Santos, and Francesco Pepe "ESPRESSO Coudé-Train: ESO's VLT working as 16-metre telescope", Proc. SPIE 11207, Fourth International Conference on Applications of Optics and Photonics, 112070V (3 October 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2527260

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KEYWORDS

Telescopes

Prisms

Lenses

Mirrors

Beam splitters

Spectrographs

Image quality

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