Speaker
Description
We present the development status of a new instrument for the 1.6m telescope of Observatório do Pico dos Dias/Brazil: SPARC4 - Simultaneous Polarimeter And Rapid Camera in 4 bands. This instrument will use four frame-transfer EMCCDs to acquire simultaneously four images in optical broad bands similar to the g, r, i, and z bands of the SDSS photometric system. SPARC4 can be used as a polarimeter or as a standard imaging camera and is tailored to produce rapid time series of variable objects. All optical and mechanical subsystems are already tested and the instrument is being integrated. The Graphical Unit Interface (GUI) is being developed under the LabView environment: a preliminary version was already tested in real observations using other observatory instruments. Python routines for data reduction are being developed and are already tested using data obtained using another polarimeter. SPARC4 first light is planned to occur in 2022.