MEGARA fiber bundles

MEGARA (Multi Espectrógrafo en GTC de Alta Resolución para Astronomía) is the future optical Integral-Field Unit (IFU) and Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS) for the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC). MEGARA has three different fiber bundles, the Large Central Bundle covering 12.5 arcsec × 11.3 arcsec on sky, the Small Compact Bundle, of 8.5 arcsec × 6.7 arcsec, and a Fiber MOS positioner system that is able to place up to 100 mini-bundles with 7 fibers each in MOS configuration within a 3.5 arcmin × 3.5 arcmin FOV. The MEGARA focal plane subsystems are located at one of the GTC Folded Cassegrain focal stations. A field lens provides a telecentric focal plane, where the fibers are located. Micro-lenses arrays couple the telescope beam to the collimator focal ratio at the entrance of the fibers. Finally, the fibers, organized in bundles conducted the light from the focal plane to the pseudo-slit plates at the entrance of the MEGARA spectrograph, which shall be located at one of the Nasmyth platforms. This article also summarizes the prototypes already done and describes the set-up that shall be used to integrate fibers and micro-lens and characterize the fiber bundles. © 2014 SPIE.