X-shooter: Backbone and UV-Blue and Visible spectrographs. FinalAIV and Measured Performance

摘要

X-shooter is a wide band (U to K) intermediate resolution (4000-14000) single object three-arms spectrograph for the VLT. Currently in the last phase of integration, X-shooter will see the first light at ESO Paranal as the first of the VLT second generation instruments in the last quarter of 2008. We describe in this paper the final steps in the integration and testing phase of the central Backbone with its key functions (including the active flexure compensation mirrors) and of the two UV-Blue and Visible spectroscopic arms. We report on the stability results of the preslit optics and of the spectrographs and on the remarkable efficiency which is derived from the measurements of the optical components of the instrument.