BTFI2: a simple, light and compact Fabry-Perot instrument for the SOAR telescope

TL;DR

BTFI-2 is a new, lightweight Fabry-Perot instrument designed for the SOAR telescope, offering high spectral resolution and a large field of view for detailed studies of galaxies and intergalactic medium.

Contribution

It introduces a compact, versatile Fabry-Perot instrument that combines features of previous devices, with enhanced resolution and compatibility with adaptive optics for the SOAR telescope.

Findings

Designed for high-resolution spectral imaging of galaxies

Features a 3x3 arcmin field of view with 0.12 arcsec pixels

Achieves spectral resolutions of 4500 and 12000 at H-alpha

Abstract

We present the concept of a new Fabry-Perot instrument called BTFI-2, which is based on the design of another Brazilian instrument for the SOAR Telescope, the Brazilian Tunable Filter Imager (BTFI). BTFI-2 is designed to be mounted on the visitor port of the SOAR Adaptive Module (SAM) facility, on the SOAR telescope, at Cerro Pach\'on, Chile. This optical Fabry-Perot instrument will have a field of view of 3 x 3 arcmin, with 0.12 arcsec per pixel and spectral resolutions of 4500 and 12000, at H-alpha, dictated by the two ICOS Fabry-Perot devices available. The instrument will be unique for the study of centers of normal, interacting and active galaxies and the intergalactic medium, whenever spatial resolution over a large area is required. BTFI-2 will combine the best features of two previous instruments, SAM-FP and BTFI: it will use an Electron Multiplication detector for low and fast scanning, it will be built with the possibility of using a new Fabry-Perot etalon which provides a range of resolutions and it will be light enough to work attached to SAM, and hence the output data cubes will be GLAO-corrected.