On 1st of August 2019 (GMT +8), Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC) issued the formal acceptance of the Conceptual Design of GTC-HRS by the Oversight Committee of the NAOC-GRANTECAN 2016 Agreement. It marks the conceptual design proposed by the Chinese collaborative group has successfully passed this review.

GTC High-Resolution Ultra-Stable Spectrograph (GTC-HRS) is one of the next generation instruments for GTC. The main science cases of this instrument involve exoplanet detection, stellar chemical abundance, isotopes, physical constants and so on. The project is jointly proposed by the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) and Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology (NIAOT). The conceptual design work gets support from the "Belt and Road Initiative" international cooperative projects of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The conceptual design review was held at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) by the GRANTECAN on 25th – 26th June 2019. The panel members include Martin M. Roth (Chair) from Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Luca Pasquini from European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Walter Seifert from Landessternwarte Heidelberg. Jianrong Shi (NAOC), Dong Xiao (NIAOT), Kai Zhang (NIAOT) and Liang Wang (Universit？ts-Sternwarte München) attended the review as the Chinese project delegation. The review was conducted by Romano L.M. Corradi, the Director of GRANTECAN. Javier Castro López-Tarruella, Head of the developments division, and the relevant staffs from the divisions of science operation and engineering operation also attended this review.

At the review, the Chinese project delegation reported the science motivation, instrument conceptual design and project management. After listening carefully to the design report and the answers to the relative questions, the panel members reached a consensus that the science cases presentation is convincing, timely and relevant, and the presented baseline design is the only one that fulfills all of the requirements, considering lessons learned with ESPRESSO and KPF.   

The panel submitted the formal report on conceptual design review for the GTC-HRS on 22nd of July. On 1st of August (GMT +8), the GRANTECAN issued the formal acceptance of the GTC-HRS conceptual design by the Oversight Committee of the NAOC-GRANTECAN 2016 Agreement. It marks the conceptual design proposed by the Chinese collaborative group has successfully passed this review. The Chinese collaborative group keeps working on GTC-HRS project in order to join the international community of GTC users. The Chinese astronomers will be entitled to get guaranteed observation time and use any its scientific instruments for cutting-edge science cases.

Group photo of the GTC-HRS conceptual design review