The LINC-NIRVANA IR cryostat

摘要

The MPIA is leading an international consortium of institutes building an instrument called LINC-NIRVANA1. The instrument will combine the light from the two 8.4 m primary mirrors of the LBT. The beam combiner will operate at wavelengths between 1.1 and 2.4 microns, using a Hawaii2 detector. A volume of about 1.6 m high with a diameter of about 0.65 m is required for the cold optics. The size of the instrument and the high requirements on vibrations brought us to a new approach for the cooling of the cryostat, which has never been tried in astronomy. The cryostat will be cooled by a flow of Helium gas. The cooler which cools the gas will be placed far away on a different level in the telescope building. The cold helium will be fed through long vacuum isolated transfer lines to the instrument cryostat. Inside the cryostat a tube will be wrapped around the mounting structure of the cold optics. The first hardware arrived at the MPIA in 2005 and the system will soon be tested in our labs.