Present and future instrumentation for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Gary J. Hill; Phillip J. MacQueen; Povilas Palunas; Stuart I. Barnes; Matthew D. Shetrone

doi:10.1117/12.788225

9 July 2008 Present and future instrumentation for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Gary J. Hill, Phillip J. MacQueen, Povilas Palunas, Stuart I. Barnes, Matthew D. Shetrone

Proceedings Volume 7014, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II; 701406 (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788225
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2008, Marseille, France

Abstract

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) is an innovative large telescope of 9.2 meter aperture, located in West Texas at McDonald Observatory. The HET operates with a fixed segmented primary and has a tracker which moves the four-mirror corrector and prime focus instrument package to track the sidereal and non-sidereal motions of objects. The HET has been taking science data for nearly a decade. Recent work has improved performance significantly, replacing the mirror coatings and installing metrology equipment to provide feedback that aids tracking and alignment of the primary mirror segments. The first phase of HET instrumentation included three facility instruments: the Low Resolution Spectrograph (LRS), the Medium Resolution Spectrograph (MRS), and High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS). The current status of these instruments is briefly described. A major upgrade of HET is in progress that will increase the field of view to 22 arcminutes diameter, replacing the corrector, tracker and prime focus instrument package. This wide field upgrade will feed a revolutionary new integral field spectrograph called VIRUS, in support of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). VIRUS is a facility instrument that consists of 150 or more copies of a simple unit integral field spectrograph. In total VIRUS will observe 34,000 spatial elements simultaneously, and will open up wide-area surveys of the emission-line universe for the first time. We describe the HET wide field upgrade and the development of VIRUS, including results from testing the prototype of the VIRUS unit spectrograph.

Citation Download Citation

Gary J. Hill, Phillip J. MacQueen, Povilas Palunas, Stuart I. Barnes, and Matthew D. Shetrone "Present and future instrumentation for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope", Proc. SPIE 7014, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II, 701406 (9 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788225

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available