VIRUS: a massively replicated 33k fiber integral field spectrograph for the upgraded Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Hill, Gary J.; Lee, Hanshin; Vattiat, Brian L.; Adams, Joshua J.; Marshall, J.L.; Drory, Niv; DePoy, D.L.; Blanc, Guillermo; Bender, Ralf; Booth, John A.

doi:10.1117/12.857808

VIRUS: a massively replicated 33k fiber integral field spectrograph for the upgraded Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Jul 15, 2010

21 pages

Part of Proceedings, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation: High Energy, Optical, and Infrared Detectors for Astronomy IV : San Diego, California, June 27-July 2, 2010

Published in:

Proc.SPIE Int.Soc.Opt.Eng. 7735 (2010) 77350L

Contribution to:

SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation

Published: Jul 15, 2010

DOI:

10.1117/12.857808

reference search1 citation

Citations per year

Abstract: (International Society for Optics and Photonics)

The Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) consists of a baseline build of 150 identicalspectrographs (arrayed as 75 units, each with a pair of spectrographs) fed by 33,600 fibers, each 1.5 arcsec diameter,deployed over the 22 arcminute field of the upgraded 10 m Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). The goal is to deploy 96units. VIRUS has a fixed bandpass of 350-550 nm and resolving power R~700. VIRUS is the first example ofindustrial-scale replication applied to optical astronomy and is capable of spectral surveys of large areas of sky. Themethod of industrial replication, in which a relatively simple, inexpensive, unit spectrograph is copied in large numbers,offers significant savings of engineering effort, cost, and schedule when compared to traditional instruments.The main motivator for VIRUS is to map the evolution of dark energy for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark EnergyExperiment (HETDEX+) using 0.8M Lyman-α emitting galaxies as tracers. The full VIRUS array is due to be deployedin late 2011 and will provide a powerful new facility instrument for the HET, well suited to the survey niche of thetelescope. VIRUS and HET will open up wide field surveys of the emission-line universe for the first time. We presentthe design, cost, and current status of VIRUS as it enters production, and review performance results from the VIRUSprototype. We also present lessons learned from our experience designing for volume production and look forward tothe application of the VIRUS concept on future extremely large telescopes (ELTs).

Telescopes: Hobby-Eberly
Astronomical instrumentation: Spectrographs
Spectrographs: VIRUS
Spectrographs: Integral Field
Spectrographs: performance

References(0)

Figures(0)

0 References