Year: 2026
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is, to date, the most ambitious ground-based telescope under construction. MOSAIC is a multi-objects spectrograph (MOS) that aims to make full use of the largest telescope in the world. At its heart, about 250 robotic positioners will pick-off skylight from the focal surface of the ELT to feed it to its Near Infrared (NIR) and visible (VIS) spectrographs. The gigantic scale of the ELT presents three main challenges for MOSAIC positioners: (1) the light beams on the focal surface cannot be focused in a single fiber, similarly to other MOS instruments, involving a design with relay mirrors patrolling the field of view, and re-imaging the sub-field on 2 fixed fiber bundles located 600 mm behind the ELT focal plane (2) The positioner needs to adapt to the local telecentricity, which means it has to point at the ELT pupil center located 37.868 m away from the focal plane (3) The Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC) needed to cover the whole focal surface of the ELT is impossible to build to this scale; hence each positioner needs its own ADC. EPFL is responsible for designing and supervising the mass manufacturing of the positioners. This paper aims to present its initial design and prototypes.
DOI: 10.1117/12.3101450
Authors: Maxime Rombach, Markus Thurneysen, Lucas Ortolani, Jurgen Schmoll, Diane Chapuis, Malak Galal, Sebastien Pernecker, Alec York, Ellen Schallig, Ian Lewis, Louis Gabarra, Cassio Berni, Ojonugwa Adukwu, Gavin Dalton, Fabio Fialho, Michaela Hirschmann, Jean-Paul Kneib, Thomas Augusteijn, Kacem El Hadi, Marisa Garcia-Vargas, Marie Larrieu, Alessandro Meoli, Tim Morris, Roser Pello, Mathieu Puech, Myriam Rodrigues, Rubén Sanchez-Janssen, Alondra Sola, Jay Stephan, Christian Surace
Institutions: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Durham University, University of Oxford, Universidade de São Paulo, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Aix-Marseille Université, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, Centre National d'Études Spatiales, Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Université de Toulouse, European Southern Observatory, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Observatoire de Paris, Laboratoire d'Étude de l'Univers et des Phénomènes Extrêmes, Isaac Newton Group, Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK Astronomy Technology Centre
Language: English
Subfield: Instrumentation
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7165423584