Category Archives: Development

The first Spectrograph Module was re-assembled at Subaru Telescope

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Earlier we reported that one of the PFS instruments, the first Spectrograph Module was shipped to Hawaii Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan in Hawaii (see here). More recently, the module has been transported to Subaru Telescope at the summit of Maunakea, and re-assembled there. PFS Spectrograph Module consists of ten and several assemblies such as camera units, grating assemblies,… Read more »

The first Spectrograph Module is heading to Subaru

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In October 2019, one of the PFS instrument subsystems, the first Spectrograph Module was shipped to Hawaii Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. We obtain about 2400 spectra with four Spectrograph Modules. The Spectrograph Modules are being developed by Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM, France), Johns Hopkins University (the USA), Princeton University (the USA) and Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica (Brazil). Since… Read more »

2nd On-Telescope Test of Metrology Camera System

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Last year Metrology Camera System (MCS) was shipped to Subaru Telescope of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, in Hawaii. After onsite integration and test, we installed MCS to the telescope and carried out optical alignment and on-telescope performance tests in June and October 2018. (See this for details)  MCS is installed to the Cassegrain focus at the bottom of the… Read more »

Second phase of fiber cable integration started in Brazil

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PFS instrument delivers lights of stars and galaxies from the telescope to our spectrographs by a ~60m-long cable of optical fibers. As we presented in the previous post (https://pfs.ipmu.jp/blog/2017/04/p447), the fiber cables were assembled at the factory of PPC Broadband Inc. in UK. Then the cables were shipped to LNA in Brazil for the next step. If some stress such… Read more »

5 “Cobra Modules” left from California to Taiwan

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Among the PFS instruments, “Cobra” modules position fibers to galaxies and stars on the Subaru Prime Focal plane. 42 Cobra modules, each of which consists of 57 fibers and its positioners, cover the entire PFS field of view without any inaccessible gaps as shown in Figure 1. Two groups are collaborating to assemble “Cobra Modules”; Brazilian team responsible for fibers,… Read more »

On-telescope Test of the Metrology Camera System

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From 23rd to 25th October 2018, or 4 months after Metrology Camera System (MCS) was tested on Subaru telescope, we have finally carried out 2nd test of MCS on the Subaru telescope. Since we used the telescope at night this time, this is the first engineering run with PFS instrument! MCS is the instrument to measure the positions of the… Read more »

The prototype fiber cable has been installed on the telescope

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We reported that Metrology Camera System had been installed to the Subaru Telescope for the test. MCS, however, is not the only instrument for PFS to have been installed to the telescope. The prototype fiber cable was also routed on the telescope to test the optical performance about a half year ago. The work was done a little long time… Read more »

Fiber slit test done for the first spectrograph module

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In this article, we are going to show recent news at Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM, France), where the first PFS Spectrograph module is being integrated. The assemblies for the first spectrograph module, such as the visible-blue and red cameras, optical bench and optical components have been delivered to LAM, as we showed in the previous article. Since then, the fiber… Read more »

After the arrival of metrology camera at the Subaru telescope…

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Since we published the article about the delivery of the Metrology Camera System (MCS) to Subaru Telescope in May this year, the member mainly from ASIAA (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Taiwan) have visited Subaru Telescope a few times, in order to finalize the integration and proceed the on-site tests. In this article, we are going to talk… Read more »

Presence of PFS at the SPIE conference

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On June 10-15 2018, there was the SPIE conference titled “Astronomical Telescope and Instrumentation” at Austin Convention Center, in Austin, Texas, USA. This is a big international conference of astronomical instrumentation held every two years. Hundreds of presentations are given about a wide range of topics across ground-based facilities, space missions, and R&D studies. Like many other projects did so… Read more »