Category Archives: Development

Second Spectrograph Module was delivered to Subaru Telescope

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This article reports the third milestones we achieved in September 2022. We shipped the second Spectrograph Module to Subaru Telescope in Hawaii! PFS utilizes 4 Spectrograph to observe about 2400 celestial objects simultanaously. Spectrograph system is being developed and integrated under the collaboration of Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica, and one… Read more »

Engineering First Light!!

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We are going to show the second milestone we achieved this month in this article.At last, we succeeded in taking stars spectra during the recent Engineering observation. That is, we achieved the engineering first light! We PFS project have carried out the on-telescope tests since Metrology Camera System was delivered to Subaru Telescope in 2018. In particular, we started engineering… Read more »

The first near-infrared camera has arrived at LAM!

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We PFS project reached many milestones in September 2022. We are going to report them in the coming articles. First of all, finally, the first near-infrared camera has been shipped from Johns Hopkins University (JHU, USA) to Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM, France)!! PFS Spectrograph equips three cameras, two visible cameras (blue and red) and one near-infrared camera, and takes… Read more »

The second fiber cable system is now on the Subaru telescope!

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As we reported in the previous article, the second fiber cable system was standing by in Hilo, Hawaii, for its installation to the Subaru telescope. Thanks to the schedule arrangement by the observatory, we had a 2-week slot in April to install and test the second fiber cable system. We are going to report the installation and test activities in… Read more »

The second fiber cable unit has arrived in Hawaii

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Happy new year! The first article in 2022 is about the subsystem delivered to Subaru telescope a while ago. In October 2021, the second fiber cable unit was shipped to Subaru telescope. PFS fiber cable system is ~55m cable connecting Prime Focus Instrument on the top of the Subaru telescope and Spectrograph System on 4th floor in the dome building…. Read more »

Engineering Observation in November 2021

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Two months after on-telescope test by integrating subsystems, we had another engineering observation (engineering run) on three nights in November 2021. In this article, we’re going to tell a story about our work around the engineering nights. Although we made big progresses in fiber configuration etc. during the September run, we also found a couple of major issues on Prime… Read more »

The first on-telescope test integrating all the delivered subsystems

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We PFS project met a big milestone in September 2021. We finally carried out on-telescope test integrating the subsystems Prime Focus Instrument, Spectrograph Module 1, Fiber Cable System 1, and Metrology Camera System!! PFS instrument consists of four major subsystems: Prime Focus Instrument (PFI) on the prime focus of Subaru Telescope, Metrology Camera System (MCS) on Cassegrain Focus, four identical… Read more »

News about activities of Spectrograph integration

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At Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), integration of the second and the third Spectrograph Modules is on-going. We are talking about the recent activities in this post. PFS project is developing four spectrograph modules to observe about 2400 objects simultaneously. We designed the system for each module to evenly cover the field of view on the telescope’s prime focal plane… Read more »

Prime Focus Instrument has arrived at Subaru Telescope

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Time flies and a half of 2021 has already passed. Earlier this year, the first fiber cable unit and the miniature telescope for night sky study “SuNSS” was installed on Subaru telescope. In this article, we report a big news of our project. Finally the Prime Focus Instrument has delivered from Taiwan to Subaru Telescope in June 2021!! Prime Focus… Read more »

PFS spectrograph observed sky spectra!

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As shown in the last article, the first fiber cable unit was installed on the Subaru telescope. In fact, in the same period, we have installed another instrument — a miniature telescope called “SuNSS” to study sky spectra at Mt. Maunakea. Since night-sky emission originates from the atmosphere, any spectra observed by ground-based telescopes contain sky component as a noise…. Read more »