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20170013_0008

© Sébastien CHASTANET/OMP/IRAP/CNRS Images

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20170013_0008

Optique collimatrice du spectrographe de l’instrument SPIRou

Collimator optic of the SPIRou (InfraRed SpectroPolarimeter) instrument’s spectrograph, a large off-axis parabola, 732 x 370 mm, in Zerodur material and having two usable areas (produced by Thalès-SESO - Aix-en-Provence). SPIRou consists of a near-infrared spectropolarimeter combined with a high-precision velocimeter. Installed at the Cassegrain focus of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) at the end of 2017, SPIRou was designed to detect habitable Earth-twin exoplanets in the planetary systems of red dwarf stars in the vicinity of the Sun. It could also unravel the mysteries of the birth of stars and planets, by observing for the first time the magnetic fields of protostars aged just a few hundred thousand years.

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