First results of EMIR at the GTC. Status and Short Term Plan

Garzón, F.; Patrick, L.; Hammersley, P.; Streblyanska, A.; Insausti, M.; Barreto, M.; Fernández, P.; Joven, E.; López, P.; Mato, A.; Moreno, H.; Núñez, M.; Patrón, J.; Pascual, S.; Cardiel, N.
Bibliographical reference

Highlights on Spanish Astrophysics X, Proceedings of the XIII Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society held on July 16-20, 2018, in Salamanca, Spain, ISBN 978-84-09-09331-1. B. Montesinos, A. Asensio Ramos, F. Buitrago, R. Schödel, E. Villaver, S. Pérez-Hoyos, I. Ordóñez-Etxeberria (eds.) p. 526-535

Advertised on:
3
2019
Number of authors
15
IAC number of authors
12
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
We report the results on the EMIR (Espectrógrafo Multiobjeto Infra-Rojo) performances after two semesters of scientific operations at the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). EMIR is one of the first common user instruments for the GTC, the 10 meter telescope operating at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain). EMIR have been built by a Consortium of Spanish and French institutes led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. EMIR is primarily designed to operated as a multi-object spectrograph in the K band, but offers a wide range of observing modes, including imaging and spectroscopy, both long slit and multi-object, in the wavelength range 0.9 to 2.5 μm. The development and fabrication of EMIR is funded by GRANTECAN and the Plan Nacional de Astronomía y Astrofísica. EMIR was shipped to the GTC on May 2016 for its integration at the Nasmyth platform. From June till November 2016 several commissioning periods were conducted. Then a short Science Verification phase was launched on which EMIR was offered to the community to test its capabilities on sky in image and long-slit observing modes. In March 2017, EMIR was included in the call for observing time in semester 17B and started routine scientific operations at the GTC from July 2017. In November 2017, EMIR was lifted off the Nasmyth platform for the first maintenance period and resume operations at the end of February 2018. Multi-object spectroscopy (MOS) commissioning has taken place, in two periods, starting at the beginning of March 18. At the time of this writing, the MOS commissioning and internal verification phases have been completed and the open science verification is underway. The MOS mode has been offered in the CAT19A. This contribution summarises the results and performances of the EMIR operation at the GTC since the beginning of its routine operation at the GTC.