GIRAFFE

Brief description of GIRAFFE

The SAAO Grating Instrument for Radiation Analysis with a Fibre Fed Échelle - GIRAFFE - consists of two components:

(i) The head which is mounted at the Cassegrain focus to collect light from the star and direct it into the fibre;

(ii) The spectrograph, constructed on an optical bench in the Coude room, in which the light emerging from the fibre is dispersed and recorded by a CCD camera.

The CCD camera is controlled by a PC in the observing room. The software, called QUARTZ, has the task of setting the exposure time, reading and displaying the CCD image and also controlling various components on the GIRAFFE head, such as the arc lamp and flatfield lamps. At the end of the exposure the FITS file is transferred to the server and can be displayed and reduced via the thin client.

There are four PCs that the observer will use:

1. A Linux PC called giraffe running QUARTZ.

2. A thin client system for data storage ltsp.suth.saao.ac.za.

3. A laptop running a LabView program to display the APD counts, i.e. monitor the light intensity emerging from the fibre.

4. The Linux TCS PC for acquisition and autoguiding.