In early 2020 the upgraded1 CRIRES2 instrument, was installed at the VLT, however the onset of the global pandemic prevented the completion of some aspects of the installation while characterisation and commissioning had to be conducted with a remote connection from Europe. This resulted in a somewhat experimental, ad-hoc, approach to characterisation that required tight co-ordination between Paranal scientists and the instrument team in Europe. Moreover, with the observatory operating at minimal staffing, we had to find workarounds for some unfinished parts of the installation and adapt our characterisation, calibration and operations strategies accordingly. In particular, we discuss the adaptation made to the metrology strategy that illustrates well the pragmatic and ultimately successful approach adopted for getting CRIRES+ ready for operations.
CRIRES+ extended the capabilities of CRIRES, the CRyogenic InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph. It transformed this VLT instrument into a cross-dispersed spectrograph to increase the wavelength range that is covered simultaneously by a factor of ten. In addition, a new detector focal plane array of three Hawaii 2RG detectors with a 5.3 μm cut-off wavelength replaced the existing detectors. Amongst many other improvements a new spectropolarimetric unit was added and the calibration system has been enhanced. The instrument was installed at the VLT on Unit Telescope 3 beginning of 2020 and successfully commissioned and verified for science operations during 2021, partly remote from Europe due to the pandemic. The instrument was subsequently offered to the community from October 2021 onwards. This article describes the performance and capabilities of this development and presents on sky results.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.