Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) optical tolerance

Hanshin Lee; Gary J. Hill; Jennifer L. Marshall; Brian L. Vattiat; Darren L. DePoy

doi:10.1117/12.857184

Translator Disclaimer

20 July 2010 Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) optical tolerance

Hanshin Lee, Gary J. Hill, Jennifer L. Marshall, Brian L. Vattiat, Darren L. DePoy

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7735, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III; 77353X (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857184
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) instrument is made up of 150+ individually compact and identical spectrographs, each fed by a fiber integral field unit. The instrument provides integral field spectroscopy from 350 nm to 550 nm of over 33,600 spatial elements per observation, each 1.8 arcsec² on the sky, at R ~ 700. The instrument will be fed by a new wide-field corrector (WFC) of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET^†) with increased science field of view as large as 22 arcmin diameter and telescope aperture of 10 m. The construction of the large number of VIRUS units requires the individual spectrographs be interchangeable at sub-system level and a production line assembly process be utilized, while meeting the optical performance specification. These requirements pose a strong emphasis on careful analysis of the manufacturing and alignment tolerances of the unit spectrograph design. In this paper, we detail the tolerance analysis, and discuss its implication to the optical performance and production of the VIRUS instrument.

Citation Download Citation

Hanshin Lee, Gary J. Hill, Jennifer L. Marshall, Brian L. Vattiat, and Darren L. DePoy "Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) optical tolerance", Proc. SPIE 7735, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III, 77353X (20 July 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857184

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE