Commissioning of the NACO Fabry-Perot interferometer at the VLT
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Hartung, Markus
Lidman, Chris
Ageorges, Nancy
Marco, Olivier
Kasper, Markus E.
Clenet, Yann
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Abstract
In October 2002 the VLT Adaptive Optics (AO) facility instrument NAOS-CONICA (NACO) was offered for the first time to the astronomical community and has been operated successfully ever since. NACO is capable of performing AO assisted imaging, spectroscopy, polarimetry, and coronography. One exciting and unique observing capability of NACO is its cold tunable Fabry-Perot Interferometer, that will be offered in October 2004. The 3-dimensional structure analysis of extended objects, such as planetary nebulae, is one interesting application of this device that combines imaging and medium resolution spectroscopy in the K-band. Using VLT day and night time commissioning data, the performance of the Fabry-Perot is evaluated and a strategy to handle the complex calibration and data reduction has been developed.