Author: Manescau, A.
Paper Title Page
MOPHA029 FORS-Up: An Upgrade of the FORS2 Instrument @ ESO VLT 253
 
  • R. Cirami, V. Baldini, I. Coretti, P. Di Marcantonio
    INAF-OAT, Trieste, Italy
  • H. Boffin, F. Derie, A. Manescau, R. Siebenmorgen
    ESO, Garching bei Muenchen, Germany
 
  The FORS Upgrade project (FORS-Up), financed by the European Southern Observatory, aims at upgrading the FORS2 instrument currently installed on the UT1 telescope of the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile. FORS2 is an optical instrument that can be operated in different modes (imaging, polarimetry, long-slit and multi-object spectroscopy). Due to its versatility, the ESO Scientific Technical Committee has identified FORS2 as a highly demanded workhorse among the VLT instruments that shall remain operative for the next 15 years. The main goals of the FORS-Up project are the replacement of the FORS2 scientific detector and the upgrade of the instrument control software and electronics. The project is conceived as "fast track" so that FORS2 is upgraded to the VLT for 2022. This paper focuses on the outcomes of the FORS-Up Phase A, ended in February 2019, and carried out as a collaboration between ESO and INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, this latter in charge of the feasibility study of the upgrade of the control software and electronics with the latest VLT standard technologies (among them the use of the PLCs and of the latest features of the VLT Control Software).  
poster icon Poster MOPHA029 [4.293 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2019-MOPHA029  
About • paper received ※ 27 September 2019       paper accepted ※ 08 October 2019       issue date ※ 30 August 2020  
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