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The author has open-sourced a program for optical modeling of astronomical instrumentation. The code allows for optical systems to be described in a programming language. An optical prescription may contain coordinate systems and transformations, arbitrary polynomial aspheric surfaces and complex volumes. Rather than using a plethora of rays to evaluate performance, all the derivatives along a ray are computed by automatic differentiation. By adaptively controlling the patches around each ray, the system can be modeled to a guaranteed known precision. The code currently consists of less than 10,000 lines of C++/stdlib code.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is unbaffled and has stability requirements tighter than the previous generation of 10- m class telescopes, leading to tougher requirements on atmospheric dispersion correctors (ADCs). Since instruments are internally baffled, ADCs may no longer shift the position of the telescope exit pupil. Designs that control pupil position are explored.

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was designed to make measurements of carbon dioxide concentrations from space with the precision and accuracy required to identify sources and sinks on regions scales (~1,000 km). Unfortunately, OCO was lost due to a failure of the launch vehicle. Since then, work has started on OCO-2, planned for launch in early 2013. This paper will document the OCO instrument performance and discuss the changes planned for the OCO-2 instrument.

Final assembly and integration of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory instrument at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California is now complete. The instrument was shipped to Orbital Sciences Corporation in March of this year for integration with the spacecraft. This observatory will measure carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen absorption to retrieve the total column carbon dioxide from a low Earth orbit. An overview of the design-driving science requirements is presented. This paper then reviews some of the key challenges encountered in the development of the sensor. Diffraction grating technology, lens assembly performance assessment, optical bench design for manufacture, optical alignment and other issues specific to scene-coupled high-resolution grating spectrometers for this difficult science retrieval are discussed.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) will measure the distribution of total column carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere from an Earth-orbiting satellite. Three high-resolution grating spectrometers measure two CO2 bands centered at 1.61 and 2.06 μm and the oxygen A-band centered at 0.76 μm in the near infrared region of the spectrum. This paper presents the optical design and highlights the critical optical requirements flowed down from the scientific requirements. These requirements necessitate a focal ratio of f/1.9, a spectral resolution of 20,000, and precedence-setting requirements for polarization stability and the instrument line shape function. The solution encompasses three grating spectrometers that are patterned after a simple refractive spectrometer approach consisting of an entrance slit, a two-element collimator, a planar reflection grating, and a two-element camera lens. Each spectrometer shares a common field of view through a single all-reflective telescope. The light is then re-collimated and passed through a relay system, separating the three bands before re-imaging the scene onto each of the spectrometer entrance slits using an all-reflective inverse Newtonian re-imager.

The optical performance of a large, optically fast, all-refracting spectrograph camera is extremely sensitive to potential temperature changes which might occur during an extended signle observation, over the duration of an observing run, and/or on seasonal time scales. A small temprature change, even at the level of a few degrees C, will lead to changs in the rerfractive indices of the glasses and the coupling medium, changes in the lens-element geometries and in the dimensions of the lens cell. These effects combine in a design-specific manner to cause potential changes of focus and magnification within the camera as well as inherent loss of image quality. We have used an optical design technique originally developed for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's BINOSPEC instrument in order to produce a construction optical design for the Carnegie IMACS Short camera. This design combines the above-mentioned temperature-dependent parameter variations in such a way that their net effect upon focus and magnification is passively reduced to negligible residuals, without the use of high-expansion plastics, "negative-c.t.e." mechanisms or active control within the lens cell. Simultaneously, the design is optimized for best inherent image quality at any temperature within the designated operating range. The optically-athermalized IMACS Short camera is under construction. We present its quantitative optical design together with our assessment of its expected performance over a (T = -4.0 to +20.0) C temperature range.

By adding a prism-cross-dispersed echellette grating as an optional module to the Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS), complete spectra from 3400 to 11000a of 15 simultaneous objects may be achieved with a resolution of R = 21,000 for a projected 0.5-arcsec slit width and a 5.0-arcsec slit length. The additional cost of this module is on the order of $50,000. This echellette module (IMACS-E) is intended for studies of stellar abundances where the targets are sufficiently dense over the 15 arcmin IMACS field of view to take advantage of the multi-slit capability. Such applications include the study of Galactic bulge stars, stars in local group galaxies, stars in Galactic globular and open clusters, and the integrated light of extra-galactic globular cluster systems.

The Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI), currently being delivered for use at the Cassegrain focus of the Keck II telescope employs an all-spherical, 308 mm focal length f/1.07 Epps camera. The camera consists of 10 lens elements in 5 groups: an oil-coupled doublet; a singlet, an oil- coupled triplet; a grease-coupled triplet; and a field flattener, which also serves as the vacuum-dewar window. A sensitivity analysis suggested that mechanical manufacturing tolerances of order +/- 25 microns were appropriate. In this paper we discuss the sensitivity analysis, the assembly and the testing of this camera.

The ESI (echellette spectrograph and imager) is a multi-mode Cassegrain spectrograph currently funded and under construction at UCO/Lick Observatory for the Keck II telescope. The ESI instrument has three modes. The 170.0-mm collimated beam can be sent directly into the camera for imaging, through a prism disperser, or to an echellette grating with prism cross-dispersion. An all-refracting Epps camera and a single 2 K by 4 K detector are used for all three modes. The direct-imaging mode has a 2.0 multiplied by 8.0- arcmin field of view with 0.15-arcsec pixels. Filters may be placed either near the focal surface of the telescope or in the parallel beam, and the option of a future upgrade including a Fabry-Perot at the pupil image is available. The low-dispersion prism-only mode has a dispersion of 50 to 300 km/sec/pix, depending on wavelength, and this mode can be used with a 8.0-arcmin long slit or in a multi-slit mode with user- made slit-masks. The high-dispersion echellette mode gives the entire spectrum from 0.39 to 1.09 microns with a 20.0-arcsec slit length in a single exposure, with a dispersion of 9.6 to 12.8 km/sec/pix.