SPICA (Stellar Parameters and Images with a Cophased Array) is a 6-telescope (6T) visible instrument for the CHARA Array (Center for High Angular Resolution in Astronomy) at Mount Wilson Observatory. It uses single mode fibers for feeding the interferometric spectrograph, which offers three different spectral resolutions: R=140, R=4000, and R=14000. CHARA/SPICA has been mainly designed for large programs (surveys) in the domain of stellar fundamental parameters but also permits fast imaging thanks to the 15 baselines and the large number of spectral channels (60 in low resolution mode). SPICA is made of the visible instrument SPICA-VIS and of a new H-band, 6T, ABCD combiner performing group delay and phase delay tracking. In this paper, we present the first light results of SPICA.
With a possible angular resolution down to 0.1-0.2 millisecond of arc using the 330 m baselines and the access to the 600-900 nm spectral domain, the CHARA Array is ideally configured for focusing on precise and accurate fundamental parameters of stars. CHARA/SPICA (Stellar Parameters and Images with a Cophased Array) aims at performing a large survey of stars all over the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. This survey will also study the effects of the different kinds of variability and surface structure on the reliability of the extracted fundamental parameters. New surface-brightness-colour relations will be extracted from this survey, for general purposes on distance determination and the characterization of faint stars. SPICA is made of a visible 6T fibered instrument and of a near-infrared fringe sensor. In this paper, we detail the science program and the main characteristics of SPICA-VIS. We present finally the initial performance obtained during the commissioning.
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