This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Observing time on the world's largest telescopes is a very valuable commodity. Any scheme that can enhance their efficiency pays significant dividends in the number of scientific research programs that can be undertaken and in the associated cost of the observations. Dr. Mario Mateo of the University of Michigan has designed a new spectrograph for use on the 6.5-meter Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, a research facility of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Spectrographs are a workhorse instrument for astronomy and many other fields of science and technology. They spread the light from the telescope focus into its constituent colors (like a rainbow) for further analysis. The analysis can tell us about the chemical composition, temperature, and velocity of a celestial object. This new spectrograph will realize a significant increase in operational efficiency, wavelength coverage, optical throughput, and ease of use over the existing instrument. The new spectrograph will be fed light simultaneously from up to 256 objects on the sky via optical fibers. The National Science Foundation is funding the development of this new spectrograph through its Major Research Instrumentation program.
