Engineering technology development in the UK for HARMONI: an E-ELT first light instrument

摘要

HARMONI is an integral field spectrograph working at visible and near-infrared wavelengths, over a range ofspatial scales from ground layer corrected to fully diffraction-limited. The instrument has been chosen to bepart of the first-light complement at the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).This paper describes the engineering technology development being undertaken at the UKATC and Oxford tosupport E-ELT HARMONI instrument in its pre-phase-B stage. This includes the description of technologydemonstrators for a tracking optical de-rotator to be located within the instrument vacuum vessel, a cryogenicshutter and a compact thermally compensating lens mount system. In addition the material testing facilitiesavailable at the UKATC are described which will enable the measurement of material and bolted joint thermalconductivities to 4K and friction/wear properties of material combinations to 20K. This work is undertaken toimprove the instrument performance and reduce technical, cost and schedule risk.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.