  MARCOT Pathfinder is a precursor for MARCOT (Multi Array of Combined
Telescopes) at Calar Alto Observatory (CAHA) in Spain. MARCOT is intended to
provide CARMENES, currently fiber-fed from the CAHA 3.5m Telescope, with a
5-15m light collecting area from a battery of several tens of small telescopes
that are incoherently fed into the final joint single fiber feed of the
spectrograph. The modular concept, based on commercially available telescopes,
results in cost estimates that are a fraction of the ones for extremely large
telescopes (ELT). As a novel approach, MARCOT will employ Multi-Mode Photonic
Lanterns (MM-PL) that are being developed as a variant of classical photonic
lanterns, to combine the light from the individual telescopes to a single fiber
feed to the instrument. This progress report presents the overall concept of
MARCOT, the pathfinder telescope and enclosure that is being commissioned at
CAHA, the concept of MM-PL, and the next step of installing the Potsdam
Multiplex Raman Spectrograph (MRS). MARCOT Pathfinder will be used to validate
the conceptual design and predicted performance of MM-PL on sky with a 7 unit
telescope prototype.
