Protostars and Planets VI, Heidelberg, July 15-20, 2013
Poster 2K023
CARMENES AT PPVI. 1. LOOKING FOR EXO-EARTHS AROUND M DWARFS
Quirrenbach, A. (Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Germany)
Amado, P. J. (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain)
Caballero, J. A. (Centro de Astrobiología, Spain)
Seifert, W. (Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Germany)
Azzaro, M. (Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán de Calar Alto, Spain)
Galadí, D. (Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán de Calar Alto, Spain)
García-Vargas, M. L. (Fractal SLNE, Spain)
Mandel, H. (Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Germany)
Mundt, R. (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Germany)
Reiners, A. (Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Germany)
Ribas, I. (Institut de Ciències de l\'Espai, Spain)
Pérez-Calpena, A. (Fractal SLNE, Spain)
Sánchez-Carrasco, M. A. (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain)
CARMENES, Consortium ()
Abstract:
CARMENES (Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exo-earths with Near-infrared and optical Echelle Spectrographs) is a next- generation instrument being built for the 3.5 m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory by a consortium of eleven Spanish and German institutions. CARMENES will conduct a five-year exoplanet survey targeting ~300 M dwarfs. The CARMENES instrument consists of two separate échelle spectrographs covering the wavelength range from 0.55 to 1.7 μm at a spectral resolution of R = 82,000, fed by fibers from the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. For late-M spectral types, the wavelength range around 1.0 μm (Y band) is the most important wavelength region for radial-velocity work. Therefore, the efficiency of CARMENES will be optimized in this range. It is thus natural to adopt an instrument concept with two spectrographs, one equipped with a CCD for the range 0.55-1.05 μm, and one with HgCdTe detectors for the range from 0.9-1.7 μm. Each spectrograph will be coupled to the 3.5 m telescope with its own optical fiber. The front end at the telescope Cassegrain focus will contain a dichroic beam splitter and an atmospheric dispersion corrector, to feed the light into the fibers leading to the spectrographs. Guiding is performed with a separate camera. Additional fibers are available for simultaneous injection of light from emission line lamps and two Fabry-Pérot wavemeters for radial-velocity calibration. The spectrographs are mounted on benches inside vacuum tanks located in the coudé laboratory of the 3.5 m dome. Each vacuum tank is equipped with a temperature stabilization system capable of keeping the temperature constant to within ±0.01K over 24 h. The visible-light (VIS) spectrograph will be operated at near room temperature, the near-infrared (NIR) spectrograph will be cooled to 140 K. First light of the VIS channel is planned for January 2015; the NIR channel will arrive early afterwards. At least 600 useable nights have been allocated at the Calar Alto 3.5 m telescope for the CARMENES survey in the time frame from 2015 to 2018.
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