ESPaDOnS
project team and budget

Project core team

A total of 15 scientist/engineers/technicians/administrators, mostly from Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, were involved for about 5 years (from 1999 to 2004) in the design, construction and integration of ESPaDOnS:

Jean-François Donati as principal investigator and system scientist (optics, mechanics);
Jean-Pierre Dupin as project manager and system engineer (control hardware/software, ccd);
Laurent Parès, Hervé Valentin and Patrick Rabou (LAOG) for the optical design, integration and tests;
Gérard Gallou and Driss Kouach for the mechanical design, integration and tests;
Sébastien Baratchart, Pierre Tilloles and Elodie Bourrec for the control software;
Guy Delaigue for the control hardware;
Francis Beigbeder for the scientific ccd;
Patrick Couderc for the integration of the scientific ccd and packaging;
Anne-Marie Cousin and Eric Brune for the administration.

On the cfht side, a number of scientists/engineers (Greg Barrick, William Rambold, Tom Vermeulen, Todd Szarlan, Sidik Isani, Jeff Ward, Nadine Manset and Remi Cabanac) were also involved sporadically in advising the ESPaDOnS team during the construction, in testing the instrument once integrated and in setting up the graphical user interface.

International contacts

Although not directly associated with the design and construction of the instrument, a few other scientists were also actively involved throughout the whole project duration, in particular for helping attracting official's interest on ESPaDOnS and raising the funds needed to start and complete the construction:

Claude Catala from Observatoire de Paris/Meudon (France);
John Landstreet from University of Western Ontario (Canada);
Bernard Foing from RSSD/ESTEC/ESA (Netherland).

Budget

The total project budget is 755 k€.




Funds were provided by:

France (CNRS & MEN, 260 k€); half (132 k€) comes from CNRS/INSU or MEN directly, while the other half comes from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Toulouse-Tarbes (LATT, 71 k€), the Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (OMP, 41 k€) and the Observatoire de Paris/Laboratoire d'Etudes Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (OP/LESIA, 16 k€).
CFHT (240 k€ including the ccd detector and dewar);
Canada/NSERC (150 k€);
ESA/ESTEC/RSSD (105 k€).

This budget breaks down into the usual engineering categories as follows:

385 k€ for the optics;
140 k€ for the mechanics;
135 k€ for the ccd detector;
60 k€ for the instrument control;
35 k€ for shipping and travel.

The budget breakdown by instrument module is:

530 k€ for the spectrograph;
160 k€ for the Cassegrain module;
15 k€ for the fibre link;
15 k€ for the inner spectrograph enclosure;
35 k€ for shipping and travel.

© Jean-François Donati, last update June 02 2004