The Brazilian tunable filter imager for the SOAR telescope. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/670382

Abstract

This article presents a description of a new Tunable Filter Instrument for the SOAR telescope. The Brazilian Tunable Filter Imager (BTFI) is a highly versatile new technology to be used both in seeing-limited mode and at higher spatial fidelity using the SAM Ground-Layer Adaptive Optics facility (SOAR Adaptive Module) which is being deployed at the SOAR telescope. Such an instrument presents important new science capabilities for the SOAR astronomical community, from studies of the centers of nearby galaxies and the insterstellar medium to statistical cosmological investigations. The BTFI concept takes advantage of three new technologies. The imaging Bragg Tunable Filter (iBTF) concept utilizes Volume Phase Holographic Gratings in a double-pass configuration as a tunable filter, while a new Fabry-Perot (FP) concept involves the use of commercially available technologies which allow a single FP etalon to act over a very large range of interference orders and hence spectral resolutions. Both of these filter technologies will be used in the same instrument. The combination allows for highly versatile capabilities. Spectral resolutions spanning the range between 25 and 30,000 can be achieved in the same instrument through the use of iBTF at low resolution and scanning FPs beyond R ∼ 2,000 with some overlap in the mid-range. The third component of the new technologies deployed in BTFI is the use of EMCCDs, which allow for rapid and cyclical wavelength scanning thus mitigating the damaging effect of atmospheric variability through the acquisition of the data cube. An additional important feature of the instrument is that it has two optical channels which allow for the simultaneous recording of the narrow-band, filtered image with the remaining (complementary) broadband light. This avoids the otherwise inevitable uncertainties inherent in tunable filter imaging using a single detector, which is subject to temporal variability of the atmospheric conditions. The system was designed to supply tunable filter imaging with a field-of-view of 3′ on a side, sampled at 0.12″ for direct Nasmyth seeing-limited area spectroscopy and for SAM’s visitor instrument port for GLAO-fed area spectroscopy. The instrument has seen first light, mounted on the SOAR telescope, as a visitor instrument. It is now in commissioning phase.