Welcome
MEGARA (Multi-Espectrógrafo en GTC de Alta Resolución para Astronomía)
is an optical Integral-Field Unit (IFU) and Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS) designed for the GTC
10.4m telescope in La Palma. The MEGARA IFU mode will offer two different bundles, one covering
14” x 12” with a spaxel size of 0.685” (Large Compact Bundle; LCB) and another one covering 10” x 8”
with a spaxel size of 0.480” (Small Compact Bundle;SCB). The MEGARA MOS will allow observing up to
100 objects in a region of 3.5’ x 3.5’ around the two IFU bundles. Eight of these bundles
will be devoted to the determination of the sky during the observation with the LCB IFU.
Each of the MEGARA MOS positioners can place a mini-bundle of 7 fibers (0.685”/fiber) covering
an area of 2.1" on the sky. Both the LCB IFU and MOS capabilities of MEGARA will provide
intermediate-to-high spectral resolution (R~6000, 11000 and 19000). When the SCB is used
the resolving powers provided by MEGARA are R=8000, 14500 and 25000.
Depending of the final budget, two different scopes are considered: Basic MEGARA, with a single spectrograph that can be fed either by the fibers coming from one of the IFUs or by the fibers coming from the robotic actuators of the MOS, and Advanced MEGARA, should two spectrographs be built, which would allow simultaneous observations with one of the two IFU bundles and the MOS.
In this webpage you can find information on the current design of MEGARA and the scientific drivers of the instrument put together by our Science Team. We are currently working on the MEGARA Preliminary Design (contract already signed by mutual agreement between GRANTECAN and the PI institution) which will go through a non-competitive review in March 2012.
The consortium responsible for the design and construction of the instrument includes the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM, Spain) where the MEGARA PI (Armando Gil de Paz) is located, the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE, México), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC, Spain), and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM, Spain). Main private contractors are FRACTAL (Spain) and AVS (Spain). Other contractors include SEDI (France), Wasatch Photonics (USA), AMUS (Germany) and GMV (Spain).
The PI and the Science Group at UCM belong to GUAIX, the UCM group of Extragalactic Astrophysics and Astronomical Instrumentation, part of the "Departamento de Astrofísica y CC. de la Atmósfera".
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