We present the practical experiences and results obtained in the manufacturing of tools and equipment needed for handling the telescope mirrors, the corrective process of the operation, and the maintenance of the 1.3m Colibrí telescope. These tools and equipment include those used for mounting and dismounting the M1, M2, and M3 mirrors, as well as the DDRAGO/CAGIRE instrument of the Colibrí telescope, from the observing room to the ground level outside the building, and to the vacuum chamber for aluminization of the mirrors. This also includes tools to balance the instrument and those used in the cleaning process of the mirrors. Our designs addressed the challenges of handling and maintaining the components in the limited space available in the building and at the dome of the Colibrí fast alt-az telescope.
This work presents the design, implementation, and commissioning of the infrastructure and support services of the 1.3- meter COLIBRI robotic telescope site, located at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional en San Pedro Martir, Instituto de Astronomía- UNAM, Baja California, Mexico. COLIBRI is a ground-based telescope, associated with the SVOM (Space Variable Object Monitor) mission dedicated to the study of gamma ray bursts. We share the progress on the building as well as the installations of the electrical systems, communications, air conditioning systems and security systems. We also share the strategies implemented to achieve the optimization of spaces in the building and the operation site, including technological challenges related to the process of enabling equipment to meet operating specifications and requirements.
We present the design of the tools and equipment needed for mounting and dismounting the M1, M2, and M3 mirrors and DDRAGO/CAGIRE instrument of the Colibrí telescope at the observing room floor and from there to the ground level outside the building. Also, it includes the tool needed to balance the instruments that will be attach to Nasmyth stations and the ones needed to handle the mirrors in the vacuum chamber. Our designs confront the problem of handling these components in the very limited space available in the dome of a fast alt-az telescope.
Cosmic explosions have emerged as a major field of astrophysics over the last years with our increasing capability to monitor large parts of the sky in different wavelengths and with different messengers (photons, neutrinos, and gravitational waves). In this context, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) play a very specific role, as they are the most energetic explosions in the Universe. The forthcoming Sino-French SVOM mission will make a major contribution to this scientific domain by improving our understanding of the GRB phenomenon and by allowing their use to understand the infancy of the Universe. In order to fulfill all of its scientific objectives, SVOM will be complemented by a fast robotic 1.3 m telescope, COLIBRI, with multiband photometric capabilities (from visible to infrared). This telescope is being jointly developed by France and Mexico. The telescope and one of its instruments are currently being extensively tested at OHP in France and will be installed in Mexico in spring 2023.
This work describes the architectural design for the construction of the building for the COLIBRI robotic telescope, which has a 1.3 m primary mirror and forms part of the ground segment of the SVOM (Space Variable Object Monitor) mission dedicated to the detection and study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The building is currently being installed. The building that will house the telescope will have a total height of 10 m including the dome. The center of the building will contain a concrete column with an independent foundation of the building of 2.5 m in diameter and 5.3 meter in height. In addition it will have 2 levels (floors) for the control room and observing room. In this article we share the progress achieved so far, which includes the design for the building structure, installations of the electrical, communication and network systems, air-conditioning systems, special considerations related to the environmental management of the operation site, and the start of construction. We also include the technological challenges and challenges addressed during the design process, in particular we will present our solutions to avoid heat leaks from the control room to the observing room and isolate the telescope from vibrations produced by the dome and the rest of the enclosure.
COLIBRI is one of the two robotic ground follow-up telescopes for the SVOM (Space Variable Object Monitor) mission dedicated to the study of gamma-ray bursts, allowing determination of precise celestial coordinates of the detected bursts. COLIBRI telescope is a two-mirror Ritchey-Chrétien telescope whose concave primary and convex secondary mirrors have diameters of 1325mm and 485mm respectively. The mirrors are currently manufactured at LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille). In this article, the advancement of the work is presented. We also give a global overview and status of the COLIBRI project.
We present an overview of the development of the end-to-end simulations programs developed for COLIBRI (Catching OpticaL and Infrared BRIght), a 1.3m robotic follow-up telescope of the forthcoming SVOM (Space Variable Object Monitor) mission dedicated to the detection and study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The overview contains a description of the Exposure Time Calculator, Image Simulator and photometric redshift code developed in order to assess the performance of COLIBRI. They are open source Python packages and were developed to be easily adaptable to any optical/ Near-Infrared imaging telescopes. We present the scientific performances of COLIBRI, which allows detecting about 95% of the current GRB dataset. Based on a sample of 500 simulated GRBs, a new Bayesian photometric redshift code predicts a relative photometric redshift accuracy of about 5% from redshift 3 to 7.
The Reionization and Transients InfraRed camera (RATIR) is a simultaneous optical/NIR multi-band imaging
camera which is 100% time-dedicated to the followup of Gamma-ray Bursts. The camera is mounted on the
1.5-meter Johnson telescope of the Mexican Observatorio Astronomico Nacional on Sierra San Pedro Martir in
Baja California. With rapid slew capability and autonomous interrupt capabilities, the system will image GRBs
in 6 bands (i, r, Z, Y, J, and H) within minutes of receiving a satellite position, detecting optically faint afterglows
in the NIR and quickly alerting the community to potential GRBs at high redshift (z>6-10). We report here
on this Spring's first light observing campaign with RATIR. We summarize the instrumental characteristics,
capabilities, and observing modes.
Eduardo de la Fuente, J. Manuel Nuñez, Salvador Zazueta, Salomon Eduardo Ibarra, Benjamin García, Benjamin Martínez, José Luis Ochoa, Gerardo Sierra, Fransisco Lazo, David Hirart, Luis Corral, Jorge Flores, Jaime Almaguer, Simon Kemp, Silvana Navarro, Alberto Nigoche-Netro, Gerardo Ramos-Larios, John Peter Phillips, Arturo Chávez, Guillermo García-Torales, Oscar Blanco Alonso, Tomas Oceguera-Becerra, Durruty de Alba, Ruben Bautista
We present the results of a modification performed in the optical system of the 62 cm telescope (f/14.32) at observatory
“Severo Díaz Galindo” Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. This modification consists of a change of distance between
the primary and secondary mirrors from 1020 to 1135 mm. With this, a change in the image plane from 5200 mm to 600
mm, measured from the vertex of the primary mirror, is obtained. The latter allow to get the first astronomical images of
The Telescope. This modification was necessary because alignment errors, such as distance between primary and
secondary mirrors in the original system were presented. Besides, the telescope has a new accurate and adequate
mechanical system installed on November 2011. Details and the first images obtained, are here presented.
Alan Watson, Michael Richer, Joshua Bloom, Nathaniel Butler, Urania Ceseña, David Clark, Enrique Colorado, Antolín Córdova, Alejandro Farah, Lester Fox-Machado, Ori Fox, Benjamín García, Leonid Georgiev, J. Jesús González, Gerardo Guisa, Leonel Gutiérrez, Joel Herrera, Christopher Klein, Alexander Kutyrev, Francisco Lazo, William Lee, Eduardo López, Esteban Luna, Benjamín Martínez, Francisco Murillo, José Manuel Murillo, Juan Manuel Núñez, J. Xavier Prochaska, José Luís Ochoa, Fernando Quirós, David Rapchun, Carlos Román-Zúñiga, Gennady Valyavin
The Reionization And Transients Infra-Red (RATIR) camera is intended for robotic operation on the 1.5-meter Harold
Johnson telescope of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional on the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, Mexico.
This paper describes the work we have carried out to successfully automate the telescope and prepare it for RATIR. One
novelty is our use of real-time absolute astrometry from the finder telescopes to point and guide the main telescope.
J. Manuel Nuñez, Eduardo de la Fuente, Esteban Luna, Joel Herrera, Enrique Velazquez, Fernando García, Eduardo López, Jorge Váldez, Benjamín García, Benjamín Martínez, Gerardo Guisa, Fernando Quiroz, Enrique Colorado, José Luis Ochoa, Jaime Almaguer, Arturo Chávez
We present the results of the optical characterization of the mirrors of the telescope of 62cm observatory "SEVERO
DIAZ GALINDO" property of the University of Guadalajara. We use the Ronchi test and a spherometer to measure by
first time, the radius of curvature for the primary and secondary mirror, the parameters of the telescope system were
obtained by using the commercial software ZEMAX. We confirm that both mirrors are adequate to work in the telescope
configuration and to do optical astronomy.
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