Author Archives: PFS Project

The second fiber cable unit has arrived in Hawaii

      Comments Off on The second fiber cable unit has arrived in Hawaii

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

      Comments Off on Engineering Observation in November 2021

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

      Comments Off on The first on-telescope test integrating all the delivered subsystems

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

      Comments Off on News about activities of Spectrograph integration

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

      Comments Off on Prime Focus Instrument has arrived at Subaru Telescope

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 »

Obituary: Prof. Naruhisa Takato

      Comments Off on Obituary: Prof. Naruhisa Takato

Professor Naruhisa Takato passed away on May 14, 2021. He got ill on April 24 while he was staying in Taichung to participate in the final phase of integration and test of Prime Focus Instrument (PFI) of the PFS instrument. An emergency surgery was operated on the same day and then he was under intensive cares, but he never returned…. Read more »

PFS spectrograph observed sky spectra!

      Comments Off on PFS spectrograph observed sky spectra!

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 »

The first fiber cable unit has arrived in Hawaii!

      Comments Off on The first fiber cable unit has arrived in Hawaii!

Time flies — there are only a few days left in 2020. The last post of this year is about a very exciting news! The first unit of the fiber cable system has been delivered from Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica (LNA), Brazil, to Hawaii Observatory of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in Hawaii, the USA. PFS is the fiber… Read more »

Final assembly of the fiber cables in the Prime Focus Instrument is progressing

      Comments Off on Final assembly of the fiber cables in the Prime Focus Instrument is progressing

Having only a month or so left in 2020, the integration of the Prime Focus Instrument (PFS) is progressing in Taiwan. The integration and test of the PFI system are being carried out by ASIAA (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics) and their partner institute ASRD of CSIST (Aeronautical Systems Research Division of Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology). Back in… Read more »

SpS development is progressing

      Comments Off on SpS development is progressing

This post shows recent activities for the development of the PFS Spectrograph modules. PFS project develops 4 identical Spectrograph Modules to obtain 2400 spectra in a singe exposure. Integration of the second and third Spectrograph Modules are on-going at Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) in France. As shown in the previous post, almost all units and assemblies had been delivered… Read more »