Journal article
The HETDEX instrumentation: Hobby-Eberly Telescope wide field upgrade and VIRUS
- Abstract:
- The Hobby–Eberly Telescope (HET) Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is undertaking a blind wide-field low-resolution spectroscopic survey of 540 deg2 of sky to identify and derive redshifts for a million Lyα-emitting galaxies in the redshift range 1.9 < z < 3.5. The ultimate goal is to measure the expansion rate of the universe at this epoch, to sharply constrain cosmological parameters and thus the nature of dark energy. A major multiyear Wide-Field Upgrade (WFU) of the HET was completed in 2016 that substantially increased the field of view to 22' diameter and the pupil to 10 m, by replacing the optical corrector, tracker, and Prime Focus Instrument Package and by developing a new telescope control system. The new, wide-field HET now feeds the Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS), a new low-resolution integral-field spectrograph (LRS2), and the Habitable Zone Planet Finder, a precision near-infrared radial velocity spectrograph. VIRUS consists of 156 identical spectrographs fed by almost 35,000 fibers in 78 integral-field units arrayed at the focus of the upgraded HET. VIRUS operates in a bandpass of 3500−5500 Å with resolving power R ≃ 800. VIRUS is the first example of large-scale replication applied to instrumentation in optical astronomy to achieve spectroscopic surveys of very large areas of sky. This paper presents technical details of the HET WFU and VIRUS, as flowed down from the HETDEX science requirements, along with experience from commissioning this major telescope upgrade and the innovative instrumentation suite for HETDEX.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 4.6MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.3847/1538-3881/ac2c02
Authors
- Publisher:
- IOP Publishing
- Journal:
- Astronomical Journal More from this journal
- Volume:
- 162
- Issue:
- 6
- Article number:
- 298
- Publication date:
- 2021-12-07
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-09-29
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1538-3881
- ISSN:
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0004-6256
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1199950
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1199950
- Deposit date:
-
2021-10-11
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Hill et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © 2021. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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