TARSIS, the 8 arcmin2 IFU for the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope

Abstract

TARSIS (Tetra-Armed Super-Ifu Spectrograph) is a wide-field IFU with an 8-arcmin2 FoV that has been already adopted by the Calar Alto Observatory (CAHA) for its 3.5m telescope and is currently under preliminary design phase. TARSIS makes use of image-slicers to cover its FoV than feed four spectrographs yielding a spectral resolution of R~1000 in the range between 320-520nm (three spectrographs/quadrants/arms) and 510-810nm (one spectrograph/quadrant/arms) with a spaxel size of ~2x2 arcsec2. The scientific objective of TARSIS is to carry out the CATARSIS survey, a blind-spectroscopic mapping of 16 galaxy clusters in the range 0.15 < z < 0.23 up to their virial radii that will make use of all available dark time at the CAHA 3.5m for six years. CATARSIS will start as soon as TARSIS is available at the telescope, which is estimated for 2028.