Spectroscopy and the Age of Giant Telescopes

Abstract

Is your 4 meter telescope just not cutting it anymore? Embarrassed to mention the telescope time you had just the other week when talking about your newest data project? Don't worry, the age of the giant telescope is upon us. I will review the status of the three current ELT projects, as well as spectroscopic technologies focusing on multi-object spectroscopy. HETDEX (the Hobby Eberly Dark Energy Experiment) uses a new approach to large instruments, replicating a spectrograph channel 150 times to produce 33,600 individual spectra across a 22 arcminute field. The technology being built can be easily modified and ported to other telescopes to take quick advantage of the integral field approach. I will touch on the many experiments that await first light as these instruments come to fruition. Let's discuss why we are pouring massive resources into these telescopes and see what they can do for us.