The images show the lens holder prototype for the FRIDA collimator, developed at CIDESI (Mexico). The whole structure is ready to be tested inside Colibrí, a cryostat specially designed for measuring the response of each one of the different FRIDA elements to cryogenic conditions.

As most of the NIR astronomical instruments, FRIDA will operate at extremely low temperature, in order to avoid contaminant NIR emission coming from objects at ambient temperature. Therefore, the whole instrument will be mounted on a platform placed inside a container that will be cooled down to −196 °C using liquid nitrogen. Another larger cryostat is under development at CIDESI, for testing FRIDA components but positioned at specific configurations. FRIDA is one of the two astronomical instrument for the 10.4m GTC telescope in which development our group is currently involved. FRIDA is expected to be commissioned on the telescope in 2011.