What will be revealed with PFS?

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— From Masahiro Takada (IPMU) Today we would like to introduce what we can study with PFS! The PFS project aims at three major scientific objectives. One of them is cosmology, in particular the nature of the so-called dark energy that is causing an accelerating expansion of the Universe. Its discovery earned 2011 Novel Prize in Physics. However, the discovery… Read more »

A prototype dichroic mirror is now ready for integration to Spectrograph.

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As introduced in the previous post, a various parts for Spectrograph are arriving in France, where we started building up the Spectrograph and verifying its performance. https://pfs.ipmu.jp/blog/2015/08/p17 This time, we are talking about dichroic mirror as one key parts in the spectrograph. PFS delivers spectra covering such a wide range of wavelengths as from visible to near infrared with a… Read more »

The fiber positionar is under the experiment

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One of the unique features of the PFS instrument is its multiplicity: Using 2400 fibers, a number of spectra of stars and galaxies can be obtained simultaneously. The actuator named “Cobra”, which is comprised of two motors, is used for moving each fiber to the position of an astronomical object of interest on the focal plane. The “patrol area”, where each fiber attached to Cobra… Read more »

Cooling Experiment of Camera Modules is Going on

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The cooling experiment of camera modules for spectrograph is going on at Johns Hopkins University, the US. In order to observe faint stars and galaxies, astronomical detectors in visible and near infrared are used under very low temperature (-100 degree Celsius / -148 degree Fahrenheit or less than it) and high vacuum (less than one billion of atmospheric pressure). By this experiment… Read more »

Review meeting of design of the Spectrographs Clean Room was held

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A review meeting for the Clean Room holding the spectrographs was held on 19 and 20 August at Hawaii Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The participants were from Kavli IPMU, collaborators having the responsibility for the Spectrograph, and Hawaii Observatory. The spectrographs are put on the fourth floor in the dome building of  Subaru telescope. The floor will have a huge clean… Read more »

IAU General Assembly

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From third to fourteenth August, International Astronomical Union (IAU) general assembly was held in Honolulu, Hawaii, the US. Astronomers from all over the world gathered for discussions during this international workshop. The PFS project presented a poster, with which the project manager and collaborators introduced the project and explained the progress.

PFS science workshop in Japan

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Subaru/PFS science workshop for Japanese researchers was held at NAOJ Mitaka campus on July 7-11, 2015. About 90 Japanese researchers gathered and discussed possible science cases with the PFS. In this workshop, not only three PFS key sciences (“cosmological” studies to understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy, “galactic archaeology” studies to reveal the history of our Milky… Read more »

First Spectrograph Module started to be built

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The PFS project has reached a major milestone toward completing the instrument. PFS has four identical spectrograph modules in order to observe about 2400 astronomical objects. Among them, various modules for the first spectrograph are coming to a clean room at Marseille Observatory (LAM) in France from our team over the world. (delivery of modules) Below are the pictures of the modules;… Read more »