SAMI: a new multi-object IFS for the Anglo-Australian telescope

Julia J. Bryant*, Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Jon Lawrence, Scott Croom, Lisa Fogarty, Michael Goodwin, Samuel Richards, Tony Farrell, Stan Miziarski, Ron Heald, Heath Jones, Steve Lee, Matthew Colless, Michael Birchall, Andrew M. Hopkins, Sarah Brough, Amanda E. Bauer

*Corresponding author for this work

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

29 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

SAMI (Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field spectrograph) has the potential to revolutionise our understanding of galaxies, with spatially-resolved spectroscopy of large numbers of targets. It is the first on-sky application of innovative photonic imaging bundles called hexabundles, which will remove the aperture effects that have biased previous single-fibre multi-object astronomical surveys. The hexabundles have lightly-fused circular multi-mode cores with a covering fraction of ∼ 73%. The thirteen hexabundles in SAMI, each have 61 fibre cores, and feed into the AAOmega spectrograph at the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). SAMI was installed at the AAT in July 2011 and the first commissioning results prove the effectiveness of hexabundles on sky. A galaxy survey of several thousand galaxies to z ∼ 0.1 will begin with SAMI in mid-2012.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationGround-Based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV
EditorsIan S. McLean, Suzanne K. Ramsay, Hideki Takami
Place of PublicationBellingham, WA
PublisherSPIE
Pages1-10
Number of pages10
Volume8446
ISBN (Print)9780819491473
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2012
Externally publishedYes
EventGround-Based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Duration: 1 Jul 20126 Jul 2012

Other

OtherGround-Based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityAmsterdam
Period1/07/126/07/12

Keywords

  • Astronomical instrumentation
  • Galaxy surveys
  • Hexabundles
  • Optical fibre

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