UKRI-1659 METIS - Integral Field Unit (IFU) Components

Tender description

The European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile, will be the world’s largest telescope operating in the visible and infrared wavelength domain. It is part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), an inter-governmental research organization. METIS is an imager and spectrometer for the (ELT), operating at wavelengths of 2.7 micron to around 14 micron. The integral field unit (IFU) is an all reflective image slicing IFU with 28 slices. It is intended that the optical components of the IFU will be manufactured using single point diamond machining to generate the multiple mirror facets on monolithic components. Lot 1: The IFU reformats the two dimensional field of view to produce the input slit for the spectrometer. The 28 slice images that make up this slit will be formatted to fit the detector format described above with a gap in the middle of the slit corresponding to the gap in the detector mosaic with margins applied. The output slit will be formed on a curved focal plane with radius of curvature 1000 mm (centre of curvature away from the IFU) to improve the performance of the predisperser, with an output pupil at infinity (telecentric beam).