252 research outputs found
Design and construction of the IMACS-IFU, a 2000-element integral field unit
The IMACS-IFU is an Integral Field Unit built for the IMACS spectrograph at
the Magellan-I-Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. It consists of two
rectangular fields of 5 by 7 arcseconds, separated by roughly one arcminute.
With a total number of 2000 spatial elements it is the second largest
fiber-lenslet based IFU worldwide, working in a wavelength range between 400
and 900 nm. Due to the equally sized fields classical background subtraction,
beam switching and shuffling are possible observation techniques. One
particular design challenge was the single, half a metre long curved slit in
combination with a non telecentric output. Besides the construction some
preliminary results are described.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Proceedings for SPIE poster 5492-175 of
SPIE Symposium "Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation", June 2004,
Glasgo
Modelling the application of integrated photonic spectrographs to astronomy
One of the well-known problems of producing instruments for Extremely Large
Telescopes is that their size (and hence cost) scales rapidly with telescope
aperture. To try to break this relation alternative new technologies have been
proposed, such as the use of the Integrated Photonic Spectrograph (IPS). Due to
their diffraction limited nature the IPS is claimed to defeat the harsh scaling
law applying to conventional instruments. The problem with astronomical
applications is that unlike conventional photonics, they are not usually fed by
diffraction limited sources. This means in order to retain throughput and
spatial information the IPS will require multiple Arrayed Waveguide Gratings
(AWGs) and a photonic lantern. We investigate the implications of these extra
components on the size of the instrument. We also investigate the potential
size advantage of using an IPS as opposed to conventional monolithic optics. To
do this, we have constructed toy models of IPS and conventional image sliced
spectrographs to calculate the relative instrument sizes and their requirements
in terms of numbers of detector pixels. Using these models we can quantify the
relative size/cost advantage for different types of instrument, by varying
different parameters e.g. multiplex gain and spectral resolution. This is
accompanied by an assessment of the uncertainties in these predictions, which
may prove crucial for the planning of future instrumentation for
highly-multiplexed spectroscopy.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and
Instrumentatio
A faint galaxy redshift survey to B=24
Using the multislit LDSS-2 spectrograph on the {\it William Herschel
Telescope} we have completed a redshift survey in the magnitude range which has produced 73 redshifts representing a 73\% complete sample
uniformly-selected from four deep fields at high Galactic latitude. The survey
extends out to and includes the highest redshift galaxy () yet
discovered in a field sample. The median redshift, \zmed=0.46, and form of
the redshift distribution constitute compelling evidence against simple
luminosity evolution as an explanation of the large excess of faint galaxies
(2--4 no-evolution) seen in this magnitude range. Rather we
identify the excess population as blue objects with and \,
luminosities similar to local galaxies indicating a dramatic decrease in
the density of such objects over the last Hubble time, confirming the trends
found in brighter redshift surveys. We also find a marked absence of {\it very}
low redshift galaxies (0.1) at faint limits, severely constraining any
significant steepening of the local field galaxy luminosity function at low
luminosities.Comment: uuencoded compressed postscript. The preprint are also available at
URL http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/preprint/PrePrint.htm
Further redshifts of 1-Jy radio sources
We have firm redshifts for a further 12 faint radio source identifications from the ‘1-Jy’ complete radio-selected sample, two of which are galaxies with redshifts z > 1.5. Another object has a provisional redshift that requires confirmation. Five of these identifications had previously been classified as QSOs on the basis of their optical morphology. Our spectroscopy shows that of these, one is definitely a galaxy and two have characteristics intermediate between those of ‘normal’ radio galaxies and those of ‘normal’ quasars, for instance broad Balmer emission but an extended optical image. Two of the eight identifications previously classified as galaxies have similar ‘intermediate’ properties. The remaining identifications have low-excitation narrow emission-line systems of the type seen in other 1-Jy radio sources by Allington-Smith et al. We confirm that the 1-Jy emission lines are a factor 2 weaker than those of 3C galaxies in the same redshift interval
GMOS IFU observations of the stellar and gaseous kinematics in the centre of NGC 1068
We present a data cube covering the central 10 arcsec of the archetypal active galaxy NGC 1068 over a wavelength range 4200–5400 Å obtained during the commissioning of the integral field unit (IFU) of the Gemini Multi-object Spectrograph (GMOS) installed on the Gemini-North telescope. The data cube shows a complex emission line morphology in the [O iii] doublet and Hβ line. To describe this structure phenomenologically we construct an atlas of velocity components derived from multiple Gaussian component fits to the emission lines. The atlas contains many features which cannot be readily associated with distinct physical structures. While some components are likely to be associated with the expected biconical outflow, others are suggestive of high velocity flows or disc-like structures. As a first step towards interpretation, we seek to identify the stellar disc using kinematical maps derived from the Mg b absorption line feature at 5170 Å and make associations between this and gaseous components in the atlas of emission line components
Characterization of hexabundles: Initial results
New multi-core imaging fibre bundles -- hexabundles -- being developed at the
University of Sydney will provide simultaneous integral field spectroscopy for
hundreds of celestial sources across a wide angular field. These are a natural
progression from the use of single fibres in existing galaxy surveys.
Hexabundles will allow us to address fundamental questions in astronomy without
the biases introduced by a fixed entrance aperture. We have begun to consider
instrument concepts that exploit hundreds of hexabundles over the widest
possible field of view. To this end, we have compared the performance of a
61-core fully-fused hexabundle and 5 lightly-fused bundles with 7 cores each.
All fibres in the bundles have 100 micron cores. In the fully-fused bundle, the
cores are distorted from a circular shape in order to achieve a higher fill
fraction. The lightly-fused bundles have circular cores and five different
cladding thicknesses which affect the fill fraction. We compare the optical
performance of all 6 bundles and find that the advantage of smaller
interstitial holes (higher fill fraction) is outweighed by the increase in
modal coupling, cross-talk and the poor optical performance caused by the
deformation of the fibre cores. Uniformly high throughput and low cross-talk
are essential for imaging faint astronomical targets with sufficient resolution
to disentangle the dynamical structure. Devices already under development will
have between 100 and 200 lightly-fused cores, although larger formats are
feasible. The light-weight packaging of hexabundles is sufficiently flexible to
allow existing robotic positioners to make use of them.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. See also a complimentary paper on
the development of hexabundles - Bland-Hawthorn et al. 2011, Optics Express,
vol. 19, p. 2649
(http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-19-3-2649
First starlight spectrum captured using an integrated photonic micro-spectrograph
Photonic technologies have received growing consideration for incorporation
into next-generation astronomical instrumentation, owing to their miniature
footprint and inherent robustness. In this paper we present results from the
first on-telescope demonstration of a miniature photonic spectrograph for
astronomy, by obtaining spectra spanning the entire H-band from several stellar
targets. The prototype was tested on the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian telescope. In
particular, we present a spectrum of the variable star Pi 01 Gru, with observed
CO molecular absorption bands, at a resolving power R = 2500 at 1600 nm.
Furthermore, we successfully demonstrate the simultaneous acquisition of
multiple spectra with a single spectrograph chip by using multiple fibre
inputs.Comment: 5 Pages, 4 Figures; A&A, Volume 544 (2012
Spectral Mapping Reconstruction of Extended Sources
Three dimensional spectroscopy of extended sources is typically performed
with dedicated integral field spectrographs. We describe a method of
reconstructing full spectral cubes, with two spatial and one spectral
dimension, from rastered spectral mapping observations employing a single slit
in a traditional slit spectrograph. When the background and image
characteristics are stable, as is often achieved in space, the use of
traditional long slits for integral field spectroscopy can substantially reduce
instrument complexity over dedicated integral field designs, without loss of
mapping efficiency -- particularly compelling when a long slit mode for single
unresolved source followup is separately required. We detail a custom
flux-conserving cube reconstruction algorithm, discuss issues of extended
source flux calibration, and describe CUBISM, a tool which implements these
methods for spectral maps obtained with ther Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared
Spectrograph.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted by PAS
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