4MOST: 4-metre multi-object spectroscopic telescope

Roelof S. de Jong, Sam Barden, Olga Bellido-Tirado, Joar Brynnel, Cristina Chiappini, Éric Depagne, Roger Haynes, Diana Johl, Daniel P. Phillips, Olivier Schnurr, Axel Schwope, Jakob Walcher, Svend-Marian Bauer, Gabriele Cescutti, Maria-Rosa Cioni, Frank Dionies, Harry Enke, Dionne Haynes, Andreas Kelz, Francisco S. KitauraGeorg Lamer, Ivan Minchev, Volker Müller, Sebastián E. Nuza, Jean Christophe Olaya, Tilmann Piffl, Emil Popow, Allar Saviauk, Matthias Steinmetz, Uğur Ural, Monica Valentini, Roland Winkler, Lutz Wisotzki, Wolfgang R. Ansorge, Manda Banerji, Eduardo Gonzalez Solares, Mike Irwin, Robert C. Kennicutt, Jr., David King, Richard McMahon, Sergey Koposov, Ian R. Parry, Xiaowei Sun, Nicholas A. Walton, Gert Finger, Olaf Iwert, Mirko Krumpe, Jean Louis Lizon, Vincenzo Mainieri, Jean Philippe Amans, Piercarlo Bonifacio, Matthieu Cohen, Patrick François, Pascal Jagourel, Shan B. Mignot, Frédéric Royer, Paola Sartoretti, Ralf Bender, Hans Joachim Hess, Florian Lang-Bardl, Bernard Muschielok, Jörg Schlichter, Hans Böhringer, Thomas Boller, Angela Bongiorno, Marcella Brusa, Tom Dwelly, Andrea Merloni, Kirpal Nandra, Mara Salvato, Johannes H. Pragt, Ramón Navarro, Gerrit Gerlofsma, Ronald Roelfsema, Gavin B. Dalton, Kevin F. Middleton, Ian A. Tosh, Corrado Boeche, Elisabetta Caffau, Norbert Christlieb, Eva K. Grebel, Camilla J. Hansen, Andreas Koch, Hans G. Ludwig, Holger Mandel, Andreas Quirrenbach, Luca Sbordone, Walter Seifert, Guido Thimm, Amina Helmi, Scott C. Trager, Thomas Bensby, Sofia Feltzing, Gregory Ruchti, Bengt Edvardsson, Andreas Korn, Karin Lind, Wilfried Boland, Matthew Colless, Gabriella Frost, James Gilbert, Peter Gillingham, Jon Lawrence, Neville Legg, Will Saunders, Andrew Sheinis, Simon Driver, Aaron Robotham, Roland Bacon, Patrick Caillier, Johan Kosmalski, Florence Laurent, Johan Richard

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference proceeding contributionpeer-review

94 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

4MOST is a wide-field, high-multiplex spectroscopic survey facility under development for the VISTA telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Its main science drivers are in the fields of galactic archeology, high-energy physics, galaxy evolution and cosmology. 4MOST will in particular provide the spectroscopic complements to the large area surveys coming from space missions like Gaia, eROSITA, Euclid, and PLATO and from ground-based facilities like VISTA, VST, DES, LSST and SKA. The 4MOST baseline concept features a 2.5 degree diameter field-of-view with ∼2400 fibres in the focal surface that are configured by a fibre positioner based on the tilting spine principle. The fibres feed two types of spectrographs; ∼1600 fibres go to two spectrographs with resolution R<5000 (λ∼390-930 nm) and ∼800 fibres to a spectrograph with R>18,000 (λ∼392-437 nm and 515-572 nm and 605-675 nm). Both types of spectrographs are fixed-configuration, three-channel spectrographs. 4MOST will have an unique operations concept in which 5 year public surveys from both the consortium and the ESO community will be combined and observed in parallel during each exposure, resulting in more than 25 million spectra of targets spread over a large fraction of the southern sky. The 4MOST Facility Simulator (4FS) was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of this observing concept. 4MOST has been accepted for implementation by ESO with operations expected to start by the end of 2020. This paper provides a top-level overview of the 4MOST facility, while other papers in these proceedings provide more detailed descriptions of the instrument concept[1], the instrument requirements development[2], the systems engineering implementation[3], the instrument model[4], the fibre positioner concepts[5], the fibre feed[6], and the spectrographs[7].

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationGround-based and airborne instrumentation for astronomy V
EditorsSuzanne K. Ramsay, Ian S. McLean, Hideki Takami
Place of PublicationBellingham, Washington
PublisherSPIE
Pages1-14
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9780819496157
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes
EventGround-Based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V - Montreal, Canada
Duration: 22 Jun 201426 Jun 2014

Publication series

NameProceedings of SPIE
PublisherSPIE
Volume9147
ISSN (Electronic)0277-786X

Other

OtherGround-Based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period22/06/1426/06/14

Keywords

  • eROSITA
  • facility simulator
  • Gaia
  • science operations
  • tilting-spine fibre postioner
  • VISTA telescope
  • wide field corrector
  • Wide-field multi-object spectrograph facility

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of '4MOST: 4-metre multi-object spectroscopic telescope'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this