This paper analyses the various ways of carrying out near IR multi-object spectroscopic studies in space. We show that ground-based observations would have limited results except in the 1-1.5 micrometers wavelength where large telescope of the 8m class would be approximately equivalent to a 1m in space. Beyond 2m, even an instrument such as the

An inversion technique has been developed to recover LTE one-dimensional model photospheres for late-type stars from very high resolution, high signal-to-noise stellar line profiles. It is successfully applied to the Sun by using a set of clean Ti I, Ca I, Cr I, and Fe I normalized line profiles with accurate transition probabilities and taking

The Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) is undertaking the design and construction of a common-user near IR spectrograph (LIRIS) for the Cassegrain focus of the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope sited at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos. LIRIS will be a near IR intermediate-resolution spectrograph designed to operate over a

The imaging photopolarimeter ISOPHOT on-board the European satellite ISO houses 144 background detectors of Si:Ga, Si:P, Ge:Ga and stressed Ge:Ga, all sampled by newly developed cold read-out electronics. There is large temporal radiation damage to most of these detectors on the daily passage through the earth's radiation belts. In addition the Ge

Due to its size and complexity the GTC Project represents a challenge for configuration management. On the one hand there is a need to record and store the enormous amount of configuration documentation generated during the different phases of the project (technical specifications, engineering drawings, interface control documents, acceptance tests

The conceptual design of the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) has been completed. One of the challenges facing the GTC Project is to obtain excellent image quality using a segmented primary mirror. The segmentation will introduce a physical effect that contributes to significant degradation of image quality. The image quality requirement imposes the