We present new observations of the center-to-limb variation of spectral lines in the quiet Sun. Our long-slit spectra are corrected for scattered light, which amounts to 4-8% of the continuum intensity, by comparison with a Fourier transform spectrum of the disk center. Different spectral lines exhibit different behaviors, depending on their

ELMER is a multi-purpose instrument for the GTC designed for both, Imaging and Spectrosopy in the visible range. The CCD camera employs a E2V Technologies CCD44-82 detector mounted in a high performance LN2 Bath Cryostat based on an ESO design and a SDSU-II CCD controller with parallel interface. The design including the low-noise fan-out

We study the effect of Faraday rotation due to a uniform magnetic field on the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Scalar fluctuations give rise only to parity-even E-type polarization of the cosmic microwave background. However in the presence of a magnetic field, a nonvanishing parity-odd B-type polarization component is produced

The final years of the XXth Century and the initial years of the XXIst Century are witnessing a revolution in the construction of large telescopes. This has been possible thanks to the availability of both thin mirror technologies and large computing power. Astronomy is thus benefiting from this. Indeed the turn of century has been rich with new

One of the problems found in the design of the electronics for astronomical instruments is the difficulty to find precise digitizers (16 bits) at high speed. In fact, most of the chips which claim to have 16-bit actually have a lower ENOB (Effective Number Of Bits), normally around 14, when considering their noise effects. In this paper, a

We present a design for the computer systems which control, configure, and monitor the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) correlator and process its output. Two distinct computer systems implement this functionality: a rack- mounted PC controls and monitors the correlator, and a cluster of 17 PCs process the correlator output into raw spectral