The Oxford SWIFT Spectrograph: first commissioning and on-sky results
Abstract
The Oxford SWIFT spectrograph, an I & z band (6500-10500 A) integral field spectrograph, is designed to operate as a facility instrument at the 200 inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain, in conjunction with the Palomar laser guide star adaptive optics system PALAO (and its upgrade to PALM3000). SWIFT provides spectra at R(≡λ/▵λ)~4000 of a contiguous two-dimensional field, 44 x 89 spatial pixels (spaxels) in size, at spatial scales of 0.235";, 0.16", and 0.08" per spaxel. It employs two 250μm thick, fully depleted, extremely red sensitive 4k X 2k CCD detector arrays (manufactured by LBNL) that provide excellent quantum efficiency out to 1000 nm. We describe the commissioning observations and present the measured values of a number of instrument parameters. We also present some first science results that give a taste of the range of science programs where SWIFT can have a substantial impact.
Additional Information
© 2010 SPIE The International Society for Optical Engineering. The SWIFT team would like to express their sincere gratitude to the Palomar Observatory staff, in particular Steve Kunsman, Mike Doyle, Greg van Idsigna, John Henning and Dan McKenna for their generous help during the installation, commissioning and subsequent operations of the SWIFT spectrograph. We would also like to thank Anna Moore for constructing a foam mock-up of SWIFT several years prior to commissioning, to verify interfaces. The Oxford SWIFT integral field spectrograph is directly supported by a Marie Curie Excellence Grant from the European Commission (MEXT-CT-2003-002792, Team Leader: N. Thatte). It is also supported by additional funds from the University of Oxford Physics Department and the John Fell OUP Research Fund. Additional funds to host and support SWIFT at the 200-inch Hale Telescope on Palomar are provided by Caltech Optical Observatories. L. Fogarty would like to acknowledge generous support from the Foley-Béjar Scholarship through Balliol College, Oxford and the support of the STFC. Based on observations obtained at the Hale Telescope, Palomar Observatory, as part of a collaborative agreement between the California Institute of Technology, its divisions Caltech Optical Observatories and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (operated for NASA), and Cornell University.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 71669
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20161101-151910949
- MEXT-CT-2003-002792
- Marie Curie Fellowship
- University of Oxford
- John Fell OUP Research Fund
- Caltech Optical Observatories
- Balliol College
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- Created
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2016-11-02Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 7735