  We report on building of a compact vacuum chamber for spectroscopy of
ultracold thulium and trapping of up to 13 million atoms. Compactness is
achieved by obviating a classical Zeeman slower section and placing an atomic
oven close to a magneto-optical trap (MOT), specifically at the distance of 11
cm. In this configuration, we significantly gained in solid angle of an atomic
beam, which is affected by MOT laser beams, and reached 1 million atoms loaded
directly in the MOT. By exploiting Zeeman-like deceleration of atoms with an
additional laser beam, we increased the number of trapped atoms to 6 million.
Then we gained an extra factor of 2 by tailoring the MOT magnetic field
gradient with an additional small magnetic coil. Demonstrated results show
great perspective of the developed setup for realizing a compact
high-performance optical atomic clock based on thulium atoms.
