Building the HARMONI engineering model

HARMONI (High Angular Resolution MOnolithic Integral field spectrograph)1 is a planned first-light integral field spectrograph for the Extremely Large Telescope. The spectrograph sub-system is being designed, developed, and built by the University of Oxford. The project has just completed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), with all major systems having nearly reached a final conceptual design. As part of the overall prototyping and assembly, integration, and testing (AIT) of the HARMONI spectrograph, we will be building a full-scale engineering model of the spectrograph. This will include all of the moving and mechanical systems, but without optics. Its main purpose is to confirm the AIT tasks before the availability of the optics, and the system will be tested at HARMONI cryogenic temperatures. By the time of the construction of the engineering model, all of the individual modules and mechanisms of the spectrograph will have been prototyped and cryogenically tested. The lessons learned from the engineering model will then be fed back into the overall design of the spectrograph modules ahead of their development.