From 10th to 14th December 2018, we held 10th PFS collaboration meeting at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Usually, individual groups for developing instruments and designing observational survey have discussions via regular video/phone meetings and sometimes by visiting each other. This meeting, on the other hand, is the biggest for the whole collaboration to gather up for discussions. About 80… Read more »
The PFS Science Team has established a working group for each scientific objective and has vigorously discussed what interesting science cases are to exploit the strengths of PFS and how we optimize the survey observation accordingly (visit our past post and our official web site for more details about science objectives of the project). Based on these discussions we have developed an… Read more »
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 »
From 27 November to 1 December 2017 was held the 9th PFS collaboration meeting at Kavli IPMU, the University of Tokyo, in Kashiwa city, Japan. More and more participants have joined to the meeting, and this year about 130 collaborators gathered to the meeting. On 28 and 29 November, we had the joint sessions and shared the project updates. The… Read more »
The PFS Science Team is now planning a large survey observation of the Universe using PFS. Three working groups have been discussing the plans to achieve their major scientific objectives: “Cosmology” research group to reveal the nature of dark matter, dark energy and neutrinos, “Galactic archeology” research group to reconstruct the history of the Milky Way Galaxy where we exist,… Read more »
For five days from July 3 to 7, the IAU (International Astronomical Union) Asia-Pacific regional meeting was held in Taipei, where the project manager Dr. Naoyuki Tamura (Kavli IPMU, project associate professor) gave a talk and introduced the current status of the PFS project, the instrument under development, and large-sky survey program under planning. Also, there was a poster presentation from… Read more »
Subaru Telescope and its instrument are, like those at many other observatories, controlled by operator and observer sitting in front of computers at the control room in the building next to the telescope enclosure. In some cases, they are operated even from the National Observatory of Japan in Mitaka, Tokyo. PFS is not a single-component instrument but an integration of… Read more »
We are pleased to report the 8th PFS Collaborations meeting at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Baltimore, USA, from 12th to 16th December 2016, with about 80 participants from various PFS institutions. During the week, we had 2-day all-hands session, where we shared progress reports in the instrument development and survey planning study after the last collaboration meeting, and discussed plans and… Read more »
PFS software collaboration meeting was held at Princeton University (USA) on 5th and 6th September. About 30 people — not only PFS members for software development, but also several staffs and software engineers from the Subaru Telescope observatory to which PFS will be delivered, and those from National Astronomical Observatory of Japan working on the database system — got together… Read more »
From 26 June to 1 July, there was a conference titled “SPIE Astronomical telescopes and instrumentation” in Edinburgh, UK. This is a pretty big international event organized every two years where engineers and scientists from many countries over the world get together to report and discuss activities and progress against challenges in projects, research, and development of various sizes and… Read more »
We will observe ~2400 objects using four identical spectrograph modules, each of which acquires ~600 spectra of astronomical sources and calibration sources. Each module covers wide wavelength range on visible and near-infrared band (380 — 1260 nm). To achieve this, the module has 3 camera units; visible-blue, visible-red and near-infrared. The light of each band is introduced by using two “dichiroic mirrors”, which split the light at a given wavelength.
PFSでは約2400個の天体を観測しますが、4つの同型の分光器を用いてそれぞれ600本のスペクトルを取得します。各分光器は可視光域から近赤外域までの広い波長範囲 (380 から1260 nm) をカバーする為、「可視光域青用」、「可視光域赤用」、「近赤外域用」の3つのカメラユニットを持っています。3つのカメラには、特定の波長で光を分けることのできるダイクロイックミラーを2つ用いて、光を導入します。
To measure the fibers position on the focal plane, “Metrology Camera System” is attached on the Cassegrain focus of Subaru telescope. Looking up to the prime focus (see this image from HSC blog for clear image), this camera takes a image of back-illuminated fibers. Thanks to a large format of ~50 M pixels CMOS sensor, this camera can acquire all ~2400 fiber spots in a single exposure. The camera system is also designed to execute the process from exposure to measurement of fiber centroids within 5 seconds. Effective measurement of the fibers position enables us to shorten overhead for fiber configuration and execute large statistical survey observation.
The Metrology Camera System will be delivered to Subaru in early 2018.
焦点面上のファイバーの位置を測定する為に、『メトロロジカメラシステム』をすばる望遠鏡のカセグレン焦点に取り付けます。このカメラは焦点面を見上げるようにして後ろ側から照らされたファイバーの画像を取得します(イメージ的にはこちらの画像 (HSCブログより) のような感じです)。メトロロジカメラには50Mピクセルの大判のCMOSセンサが搭載されているため、約2400本のファイバー像をたった一回の露出で得ることができます。また、画像の取得から各ファイバーの位置測定までを5秒以内に行うように設計されています。このようにファイバーの効率よく位置を測定することで、ファイバーの配置など観測準備にかかる時間をなるべく短くし、大規模サーベイ観測を行うことができるのです。
メトロロジカメラシステムは2018年4月にすばる望遠鏡へ搬送されるました。
The Spectrograph Clean Room is a room whose size is 6.7 m wide, 8.6 m long ,and 3.6 m high. Four PFS spectrographs will be accommodated in the clean room. To stabilize the spectrograph performance, the temperature in the room will be controlled at 5 +- 1 degree Celsius. Besides, a crane with capability of 500 kg is installed for assembly and maintenance of the Spectrograph.
分光器設置室は、すばる望遠鏡ドーム棟4階に建設された部屋で、幅6.7m × 奥行8.6m × 高さ 3.6 mの大きさです。 PFSの4台の分光器がこの部屋に設置されます。分光器の安定性を図るために、部屋全体が5±1℃の範囲で温度管理されます。また、分光器の設置やメンテナンス用に室内には耐荷重500kgのクレーンが設置されています。
