Tamura, N;
Yabe, K;
Koshida, S;
Moritani, Y;
Tanaka, M;
Ishigaki, MN;
Ishizuka, Y;
... Siegel, J; + view all
(2024)
Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) for Subaru Telescope: progressing final steps to science operation.
In: Bryant, Julia J and Motohara, Kentaro and Vernet, Joël RD, (eds.)
Proceedings of SPIE: Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy X.
(pp. 1309605-1-1309605-12).
SPIE: Bellingham, WA, USA.
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Abstract
The instrumentation of the Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS), a next generation facility instrument on the Subaru telescope, is now in the final phase of its commissioning process and its general, open-use operations for sciences will provisionally start in 2025. The instrument enables simultaneous spectroscopy with 2386 individual fibers distributed over a very wide (∼1.3 degrees in diameter) field of view on the Subaru’s prime focus. The spectra cover a wide range of wavelengths from 380nm to 1260nm in one exposure in the Low-Resolution (LR) mode (while the visible red channel has the Medium-Resolution (MR) mode as well that covers 710−885nm). The system integration activities at the observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii have been continuing since the arrival of the Metrology Camera System in 2018. On-sky engineering tests and observations have also been carried out continually since September 2021 and, despite various difficulties in interlacing commissioning processes with development activities on the schedule and addressing some major issues on hardware and software, the team successfully observed many targeted stars as intended over the entire field of view (Engineering First Light) in September 2022. Then in parallel to the arrival, integration and commissioning of more hardware components, validations and optimizations of the performance and operation of the instrument are ongoing. The accuracy of the fiber positioning process and the speed of the fiber reconfiguration process have been recently confirmed to be ∼ 20−30μm for 95% of allocated fibers, and ∼130 seconds, respectively. While precise quantitative analyses are still in progress, the measured throughput has been confirmed to be consistent with the model where the information from various sub-components and sub-assemblies is integrated. Long integration of relatively faint objects are being taken to validate an expected increase of signal-to-noise ratio as more exposures are taken and co-added without any serious systematic errors from, e.g., sky subtraction process. The PFS science operation will be carried out in a queue mode by default and various developments, implementations and validations have been underway accordingly in parallel to the instrument commissioning activities. Meetings and sessions are arranged continually with the communities of potential PFS users on multiple scales, and discussions are iterated for mutual understanding and possible optimization of the rules and procedures over a wide range of processes such as proposal submission, observation planning, data acquisition and data delivery. The end-to-end processes of queue observations including successive exposures with updated plans based on assessed qualities of the data from past observations are being tested during engineering observations, and further optimizations are being undertaken. In this contribution, a top-level summary of these achievements and ongoing progresses and future perspectives will be provided.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) for Subaru Telescope: progressing final steps to science operation |
| Event: | SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2024 |
| Location: | Yokohama, Japan |
| Dates: | 16 Jun 2024 - 21 Jun 2024 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1117/12.3015967 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.3015967 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10198642 |
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