HARPS3 - Instrumental Overview

In 2014 the ING Board issued a call for letters of intent to provide innovative instrumentation on the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT), in exchange for substantial allocations for telescope time. The Terra Hunting Experiment (THE) replied with a proposal to install the High Accuracy Radial-velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS3) on the INT to carry out a monitoring survey of stars, or the Core Survey, lasting 10 years, with the goal of detecting Earth mass exoplanets in the habitable zone.

The proposal included provisions to deploy a new telescope control system on the INT that would allow for robotic operation of HARPS3 (see HARPS3 for a roboticized Isaac Newton Telescope for more information).

HARPS3 is a fibre-fed, R4 echelle spectrograph, optimised for mechanical and thermal stability to support high-precision radial velocity measurements (expectation is R ~ 115.000 across the optical band wavelength range: 380-690 nm). It is housed in the Coudé room of the INT and it inherits the successful design of HARPS@ESO and HARPS-N@TNG, while incorporating upgrades for modern robotic operations.

A more detailed overview of specifications, operations and expected performance will follow shortly.