Until further notice the VATT-PEPSI connection has now been mothballed. However, it can be restarted any time once observing time at VATT has been granted.

The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) is a 1.83 m alt-az telescope located approximately 350 m away from the LBT building. It is jointly operated by the Vatican Observatory Foundation with the University of Arizona. Its optics consist of a f/1.0 honey-combed borosilicate primary mirror with a 0.38-m f/0.9 Zerodur concave secondary mirror making up a f/9.0 Gregorian focus on the rear side of the primary mirror. The VATT is connected to PEPSI through its fiber injection unit FIU with a total fibre length of 453 m. The FIU must be mounted for every PEPSI run.

The paper describing the technical details can be downloaded from here.

The VATT feed was offered for 40 nights a year. It was available in 2017A and 2017B.

Fiber transmission is shown here:

 

Fiber injection unit (FIU)

Fiber core diameter is 200 μm, fiber type is  PolyMicro FBP200240280400. Starting with semester 2017A, we employ a dedicated image slicer for the VATT fiber which enables a spectral resolution of R=200,000 at slightly higher effective throughput than before.

The optical design and the picture of the FIU are shown below: