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.
The Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) consists of a baseline build of 150 identical spectrographs (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 96 units. VIRUS has a fixed bandpass of 350-550 nm and resolving power R~700. VIRUS is the first example of industrial-scale replication applied to optical astronomy and is capable of spectral surveys of large areas of sky. The method 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 Energy Experiment (HETDEX ‡ ) using 0.8M Lyman-α emitting galaxies as tracers. The full VIRUS array is due to be deployed in late 2011 and will provide a powerful new facility instrument for the HET, well suited to the survey niche of the telescope. VIRUS and HET will open up wide field surveys of the emission-line universe for the first time. We present the design, cost, and current status of VIRUS as it enters production, and review performance results from the VIRUS prototype. We also present lessons learned from our experience designing for volume production and look forward to the application of the VIRUS concept on future extremely large telescopes (ELTs). * The Hobby -Eberly Telescope is operated by McDonald Observatory on behalf
The Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) consists of a baseline build of 150 identical spectrographs (arrayed as 75 unit pairs) fed by 33,600 fibers, each 1.5 arcsec diameter, at the focus of the upgraded 10 m Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). VIRUS has a fixed bandpass of 350-550 nm and resolving power R~700. VIRUS is the first example of industrial-scale replication applied to optical astronomy and is capable of surveying large areas of sky, spectrally. The VIRUS concept offers significant savings of engineering effort, cost, and schedule when compared to traditional instruments.
The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) † , located in West Texas at the McDonald Observatory, operates with a fixed segmented primary (M1) and has a tracker, which moves the prime-focus corrector and instrument package to track the sidereal and non-sidereal motions of objects. We have completed a major multi-year upgrade of the HET that has substantially increased the pupil size to 10 meters and the field of view to 22 arcminutes by deploying the new Wide Field Corrector (WFC), new tracker system, and new Prime Focus Instrument Package (PFIP). The focus of this paper is on the delivery, installation, and on-sky verification of the WFC. We summarize the technical challenges encountered and resolutions to overcome such challenges during the construction of the system. We then detail the transportation from Tucson to the HET, on-site ground verification test results, post-installation static alignment among the WFC, PFIP, and M1, and on-sky verification of alignment and image quality via deploying multiple wavefront sensors across 22 arcminutes field of view. The new wide field HET will feed the revolutionary new integral field spectrograph called VIRUS, in support of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), a new low resolution spectrograph (LRS2), an upgraded high resolution spectrograph (HRS2), and later the Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF).
The second generation Low Resolution Spectrograph (LRS2) is a new facility instrument for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). Based on the design of the Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS), which is the new flagship instrument for carrying out the HET Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), LRS2 provides integral field spectroscopy for a seeing-limited field of 12 ×6 . For LRS2, the replicable design of VIRUS has been leveraged to gain broad wavelength coverage from 370 nm to 1.0 µm, spread between two fiber-fed dualchannel spectrographs, each of which can operate as an independent instrument. The blue spectrograph, LRS2-B, covers 370 ≤ λ (nm) ≤ 470 and 460 ≤ λ (nm) ≤ 700 at fixed resolving powers of R = λ/δλ ≈ 1900 and 1100, respectively, while the red spectrograph, LRS2-R, covers 650 ≤ λ (nm) ≤ 842 and 818 ≤ λ (nm) ≤ 1050 with both of its channels having R ≈ 1800. In this paper, we present a detailed description of the instrument's design in which we focus on the departures from the basic VIRUS framework. The primary modifications include the fore-optics that are used to feed the fiber integral field units at unity fill-factor, the cameras' correcting optics and detectors, and the volume phase holographic grisms. We also present a model of the instrument's sensitivity and a description of specific science cases that have driven the design of LRS2, including systematically studying the spatially resolved properties of extended Lyα blobs at 2 < z < 3. LRS2 will provide a powerful spectroscopic follow-up platform for large surveys such as HETDEX.
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