Production year
2017
© Sébastien CHASTANET/OMP/IRAP/CNRS Images
20170013_0020
Cleaning of the Hartmann mask wheel after installation. It will be used during testing of the SPIRou (InfraRed SpectroPolarimeter) instrument's spectrograph at cryogenic temperature (80 kelvin or close to -200°C). 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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2017
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