TA-MOONS is a multi-object Optical to Near Infrared (NIR) spectrometer with the primary science
cases to conduct a spectroscopic survey of Young Stellar Objects (YSO’s) at visible as well as at NIR
wavebands simultaneously at a spectroscopic resolution of R~2700. The wavelength coverage of this
instrument is from 0.36-2.50 microns. The instrument is jointly developed by TIFR and ARIES,
designed for 3.6 meter Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT)1
as a second generation main port
instrument. The instrument is capable of observing 8-sources simultaneously within the sky field of
view (FoV) of 12 arcmin diameter with its front optics deployable slit (DS) technique. These are mirror
based 8-pickup arms located around the telescope focal plane. The DS is a novel concept consisting
of tiny mirror-based arms having translation and rotational motion to pick up the source within each
arm’s patrol field. This manuscript presents the optical design of front optics and probe
viewer/calibration optics. Conceptual idea of the two-arm spectrometer also presented.