In order to take advantage of SOAR's unique angular resolution and to explore extended objects, objects in crowded fields, Brazilian astronomers have proposed, as one of SOAR's instruments, an Optical Spectrograph (350 to 1050 nm) performing bi-dimensional spectroscopy using an Integral Field Unit (IFU). Scientists and engineers of the LNA and IAG/USP, with several parts being done by Brazilian industry, are constructing this instrument at the LNA. Included in the team are the following LNA staff: A.C. Oliveira, B.V. Castilho, C. Gneiding, F. Rodrigues, R.P. Campos.
SOAR partner astronomers agree that it is very important that SOAR have a highresolution spectrograph among its instruments. High-resolution spectroscopy is used by a large fraction of Brazilian observational astronomers (30% of the observing time with the 1.6m telescope at LNA is spent on high-resolution spectroscopy mode) and also by many groups of the SOAR community in the US. In view of its high image quality and moderately large collecting area, SOAR will be able to yield high quality spectroscopic data for a large variety of objects of astrophysical interest. Moreover, it can provide important data on objects, which would supplement the samples of faint targets observed with Gemini. In this sense a proposal was prepared and presented for the construction of such an instrument at the LNA as one of the second-generation instruments of SOAR. The general characteristics for the spectrograph should be:
Funding for the optical/mechanical design and early construction stages (US$ 100,000) are included in the proposal of MEGALIT and the remaining funds can be obtained in future proposals like PRONEX, FUNDOS and special proposals to state funding agencies. (B.V. Castilho)
Participation in a workshop about instrumentation for Gemini and SOAR which took place at the Instituto Astronômico e Geofísico of the University of São Paulo in june 2001. (A. Bruch, B.V. Castilho, M. Sartori)