SPIRou collects its first solar photons! SPIRou collected its first non-laboratory photons on Nov 15 & 16 by staring at the Sun for a couple of hours. For these observations we used a solar telescope with a motorized mount, allowing to track the Sun along its celestial course. A 300 µm fiber was attached to the side […]
SPIRou gets a new pupil slicer for its cryogenic spectrograph The second pupil slicer of the SPIRou spectrograph was manufactured and delivered at IRAP / OMP by Winlight Optics, in South-Est France. This slicer duplicates the previous one in its functionalities (2017 January: SPIRou pupil slicer delivered at IRAP / OMP) with slight changes to […]
SPIRou demonstrates sub-m/s velocimetric stability Following the perfect focussing of the cryogenic spectrograph, SPIRou is entering a phase of intense testing to investigate how well it performs in comparison with expectations from the detailed optical and cryomechanical computational analyses of the whole system carried out prior to the Final Design Review that SPIRou passed in […]
Perfect focus for the SPIRou spectrograph Shielded from the Toulouse heatwave of these last weeks, the SPIRou spectrograph initiated its 3rd cryogenic cycle and reached perfect focussing in early June, after 2 weeks of cooling down and thermal stabilization. The échelle spectra that SPIRou produces when fed with light from ThAr & Une (Thorium-Argon and […]
Our friend Pierre passed away on May 15th We have very sad news to share this week. Pierre Soler, the director of OMP, passed away following a sudden worsening of the illness he was suffering from. Since the very beginning of his OMP directorship, Pierre was convinced that SPIRou was to be a key instrument […]
Spectrograph focus and thermal stability on good tracks The second SPIRou cryogenic cycle is reaching completion, with the spectrograph now warming up since May 14th. Following the dewar closure on April 25th, the spectrograph started its cool down phase on April 27th and reached a temperature of 80K on May 8th, implying a total cooling […]
The SPIRou spectrograph has just started a new cooling cycle Following the previous cooling cycle and the first in-lab images recorded last month, a complete re-alignment of the main optical components (the pupil slicer, the off-axis parabolic collimator, the folding flat mirror and the camera) was carried out at ambient temperature to improve the overall […]
The full SPIRou spectrograph initiated a new cryogenic cycle Following the delivery of the camera and of the test H2RG detector at IRAP/OMP, the now-complete SPIRou spectrograph was prepared for a new cooling cycle, the first one featuring the whole pre-aligned optical train. SPIRou includes in particular the pupil slicer whose octagonal fibers can be […]
SPIRou just saw first lab light at IRAP/OMP One week after starting the cooling cycle, the spectrograph bench, optics and test H2RG detector reached the goal temperature of 85 K, allowing the team to collect the first lab images. Light from different lamps was injected in the cryogenic spectrograph through optical fibers fed from the SPIRou […]