PFS Blog

PFS presentations at IAU meeting

PFS Project 2017-07-24 Comments Off

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 »

Joint Work for Spectrograph Development at LAM

PFS Project 2017-07-10 No Comments

At Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), PFS Spectrograph Module (SM) is fully integrated and its performance is validated. As a part of these processes, two visible-red camera units are being tested; one is for thermal performance test and the other is for optical performance test. From 19th to 29th June, we got together at LAM and dedicated ourselves to joint… Read more »

Assembly of positioner module is in progress / ファイバー配置モジュール組み立て中

PFS Project 2017-06-04 No Comments

PFS instrument catches light from about 2400 astronomical objects using fibers paved on the focal plane at the prime focus of the Subaru telescope, and each fiber is positioned by 2-staged actuator called “Cobra” (). As talked in the previous posts, 57 assemblies of Cobra positioners and fibers are integrated to one module, which is mounted to the optical bench…. Read more »

Commissioning of IR detector at JHU

PFS Project 2017-05-03 No Comments

PFS is a spectrometer that disperses light and measures the intensity as a function of wavelength using photosensitive detectors. The operational bandpass for the PFS instrument covers the wavelengths from 380nm to 1260nm. The light delivered to the spectrograph is initially separated into three channels of blue, red, and near-infrared (NIR) by two dichroic mirrors. Each channel is deflected to… Read more »

Prototyping Fiber Cable

PFS Project 2017-04-27 No Comments

In PFS observations, photons from the sky are fed into the optical fibers from one end on the Subaru prime focus, and are emitted out from the other end to feed the spectrograph. The prime focus and spectrograph are physically remote from each other, so the total length of the fibers that optically link them has to be approx. 60… Read more »

Spectrograph Integration & Test at LAM

PFS Project 2017-04-04 No Comments

Among the PFS instrument subsystem, four spectrographs are developed under the leadership of LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille). Since 2015, the first spectrograph module has been integrated and tested for its performance. In this article, we’ll talk about integration and test activities at LAM. Below photo shows the Visible-Red camera unit under assembly: optical components were accommodated in the cryostat… Read more »

Review meeting of infrastructures for controling the PFS instruments

PFS Project 2017-03-18 No Comments

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 »

Metrology Camera System integration is progressing in Taiwan

PFS Project 2017-02-27 Comments Off

Metrology Camera System to measure the positions of the fibers on the Subaru prime focus is being developed by ASIAA (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics) , in Taiwan. After the success of the critical design review in 2015, the parts production and system integration are progressing, and all the mechanical parts have been manufactured. The photo below shows some of them…. Read more »

Installation of Spectrographs Clean Room Crane

PFS Project 2017-02-06 No Comments

The integration of the Spectrographs Clean Room has been progressing at the Subaru Telescope observatory since last May, when the floor of the dome building was cleaned up. Recently, a crane has been installed to the ceiling structure of the spectrograph floor. This 500kg-capacity crane will be used to carry the individual components and sub-assemblies of the spectrograph module such… Read more »

First light at lab.!

PFS Project 2017-01-10 No Comments

The PFS Spectrographs are integrated and validated their performances at Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), France. At present, the first spectroraph module is being assembled, tested for the performance of individual parts. Last month, we had the First Light of the visible-red camera in the laboratory. The below is the first light image, in which you can see many spectra… Read more »