History

The Astronomy Research using the Cornell Infra-Red Imaging Spectrograph (ARCoIRIS) was made possible through supplemental funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) [2] to NOAO [3] under the "Renewing Small Telescopes for Astronomical Research (ReSTAR [4])" Phase 1 program (Federal Award ID: 0936648), for which we are grateful.  Its construction was a partnership between Cornell University (Dr. Terry Herter [5], PI) and NOAO.  Cornell engaged the University of Virginia (Dr. John Wilson [6]) to support the project.  ARCoIRIS is the fourth generation of the TripleSpec instrument; two are already in use on the Palomar Observatory 200-inch Hale Telescope [7] and the other on the Astronomy Research Consortium (ARC) 3.5-m telescope [8].  The third is under construction at the California Institute of Technology (Kieth Matthews, PI) for the Keck II telescope [9].  ARCoIRIS was installed at the f/8 Cassegrain focus on the Blanco 4-m telescope at CTIO during late-April 2015. The instrument was moved to the SOAR telescope in 2019 and re-christened TripleSpec4.1.