LRS2: a new low-resolution spectrograph for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

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

doi:10.1117/12.857201

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20 July 2010 LRS2: a new low-resolution spectrograph for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

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

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Proceedings Volume 7735, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III; 77357H (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857201
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

In the era of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) Wide-Field Upgrade (WFU), the current Low-Resolution Spectrograph (LRS) will be replaced with a more capable red-optimized fiber instrument, called LRS2. This new spectrograph will be based on the Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) that was designed to be easily adapted to a wide range of spectral resolutions, and wavelength ranges. The current snapshot of LRS2, fed by a 7x12 sq. arcsec fiber integral-field unit (IFU), covers 350-1100 nm, simultaneously at a fixed resolving power R~1800, with the wavelength range split into two pairs of spectrographs, one for the blue to red wavelength range (350-630 nm) and the other for the red and far-red range (630-1100 nm). These units are designated LRS2-B and LRS2-R, respectively. Only minimal modification from the base VIRUS design in gratings (for both pairs) and in the detector (for the red pair only) is required. In addition to this flexibility, the generic nature and massively replicable characteristic of the instrument can allow us to adapt the instrument to a wide range of not only telescope diameters (1 m ~ 40 m), but also observing modes (single to multiple objects). We discuss the current snapshot of the LRS2 design.

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Hanshin Lee, Taylor S. Chonis, Gary J. Hill, Darren L. DePoy, Jennifer L. Marshall, and Brian Vattiat "LRS2: a new low-resolution spectrograph for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope", Proc. SPIE 7735, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III, 77357H (20 July 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857201

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