The ESO Spectroscopic facility

TL;DR

This paper proposes a design for a new, large, multi-fiber spectroscopic telescope with wide field of view, capable of high and low resolution spectroscopy, aimed at galactic studies and stellar observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel telescope concept with a large etendue, wide field, and high fiber capacity, optimized for spectroscopic surveys of stars and galactic evolution.

Findings

Design includes a 2.5-degree FoV and 16,000 fibers capacity.

Features a gravity-invariant focus for integral field units.

Supports both high and low resolution spectroscopy.

Abstract

We present the concept of a novel facility dedicated to massively-multiplexed spectroscopy. The telescope has a very wide field Cassegrain focus optimised for fibre feeding. With a Field of View (FoV) of 2.5 degrees diameter and a 11.4m pupil, it will be the largest etendue telescope. The large focal plane can easily host up to 16.000 fibres. In addition, a gravity invariant focus for the central 10 arc-minutes is available to host a giant integral field unit (IFU). The 3 lenses corrector includes an ADC, and has good performance in the 360-1300 nm wavelength range. The top level science requirements were developed by a dedicated ESO working group, and one of the primary cases is high resolution spectroscopy of GAIA stars and, in general, how our Galaxy formed and evolves. The facility will therefore be equipped with both, high and low resolution spectrographs. We stress the importance of developing the telescope and instrument designs simultaneously. The most relevant R\&D aspect is also briefly discussed.