Present and future instrumentation for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Gary J. Hill; Phillip J. MacQueen; Povilas Palunas; Matthew D. Shetrone; John A. Booth

doi:10.1117/12.672642

27 June 2006 Present and future instrumentation for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Gary J. Hill, Phillip J. MacQueen, Povilas Palunas, Matthew D. Shetrone, John A. Booth

Proceedings Volume 6269, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy; 626907 (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.672642
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2006, Orlando, Florida , United States

Abstract

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) is an innovative large telescope of 9.2 meter aperture, located in West Texas at McDonald Observatory. The HET operates with a fixed segmented primary and has a tracker which moves the four-mirror corrector and prime focus instrument package to track the sidereal and non-sidereal motions of objects. The HET has been taking science data for six years. Work over the past two years has improved performance significantly, replacing the mirror coatings and installing metrology equipment to provide feedback that aids tracking and alignment of the primary mirror segments. The first phase of HET instrumentation includes three facility instruments: the Low Resolution Spectrograph (LRS), the Medium Resolution Spectrograph (MRS), and High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS). The current status of these instruments is described. A major upgrade of HET is planned that will increase the field of view to 22 arcminutes diameter, replacing the corrector, tracker and prime focus instrument package. This wide field upgrade will feed a revolutionary new integral field spectrograph called VIRUS, in support of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX).

Citation Download Citation

Gary J. Hill, Phillip J. MacQueen, Povilas Palunas, Matthew D. Shetrone, and John A. Booth "Present and future instrumentation for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope", Proc. SPIE 6269, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy, 626907 (27 June 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.672642

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