Development of the FRIDA control software during the Integration and Testing phases

In force date
Call year
2020
Investigator
José Alfonso
López Aguerri
Financial institution
Amount granted to the IAC Consortium
69.999,99 €
Description

The FRIDA instrument is an integral field spectrograph and camera, both designedto work in high spatial resolution, at the diffraction limit of GTC (Gran Telescopio Canarias), in the range of 1 - 2.5 microns. FRIDA is a general purpose instrument for the entire GTC community, its construction approved by the Scientific Advisory Committee of GTC in 2004, and approved and financed with 50% of its cost by the company GRANTECAN S.A in 2006. FRIDA will be at GTC in 2023. An essential part of the necessary developments for the operation of the instrument is the elaboration of the control software of the multiple mechanisms of which it consists, the reading and processing of the detector images and the Interaction and communication with the rest of the telescope software components.

FRIDA is the first instrument to be coupled to the adaptive optics system, GTCAO, of the GTC telescope, equipment whose development is being completed thanks to the financing existing by the Government of the Canary Islands. GTC is the largest optical and infrared telescope in the world, and therefore FRIDA + GTCAO will produce the astronomical images of the largest currently possible contrast, both on the ground and in space, in the range of 1 to 2.5 microns, paving the way for future high resolution instrumentation for GTC and new high-impact science programs, and placing the GTC telescope at the leadership level world in terms of angular resolution, the highest currently possible in the range infrared, and a benchmark for international excellence. In the later stages of instrument development (integration and testing) the level of Interaction between the software development team (at the IAC) with the rest of the development of the instrument (carried out at UNAM - Mexico- and at the University of Florida -USA) and the telescope, is so high that it requires an increase in the engineering resources of software for its execution. With this proposal, the hiring of a software engineer is requested to join the current team and would participate in the development of the software during the integration and tests of the instrument, prior to its final verification and acceptance and its transfer and telescope installation.

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Image of the first optical alingment of FRIDA
FRIDA - inFRared Imager and Dissector for Adaptive optics

FRIDA (inFRared Imager and Dissector for Adaptive optics) is an integral field spectrograph in the near infrared, also with image mode, which will be installed in the GTC telescope. It will use the adaptive optics system of GTC (GTCAO) to observe with very high spatial resolution and spectral resolutions of up to 30,000.

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