OSIRIS is an imaging system and a low-resolution long-slit and multi-object spectrograph for the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) covering the wavelength range 0.365-1.0 µm with an unvignetted field of view of 8.53'x8.53' and 8.0'x5.2' in direct imaging and low-resolution spectroscopy respectively. OSIRIS represents a new generation of instrumental observing techniques, that includes the concepts of tunable filters (TF) and charge shuffling on the CCD detectors.
The OSIRIS instrument has been developed as a response to the GRANTECAN call to provide GTC with a set of competitive Day One instruments.
On October 23-24, 1997, a Spanish National Meeting organised by GRANTECAN was held in La Laguna to identify the interests of the spanish community for the GTC instruments. Working groups were formed and become the embryo of the Instrument Definition Teams to develop the future instrumentation. OSIRIS was born from the optical imaging group, under the leadership of the Principal Investigator Jordi Cepa.
The
first meeting of the future Core Group was on May 27, 1998. At the left
you can see article on "El Diario Montañes" with the
report of the event (click on the figure for a larger view).
On July 17 1998 an Announcement of Opportunity for GTC Day One instruments was issued, with December 15 1998 as deadline. From the responses received, and the presentations and review held in March 2 and 3 1999, GTC decided in March 11 1999 to contract the preliminary design of OSIRIS as choice Day One GTC instrument for the optical wavelength range. In July 29 1999 a contract was signed between the IAC and GRANTECAN for a preliminary design.
After the Preliminary Design Review the contract for the development of the instrument was signed in December 20, 2000.
See also:
Last update September 2, 2008, by Héctor Castañeda