Instruments
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VIRUS
The Visible Integral-Field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS)
instrument is being built at Texas A&M University in collaboration
with University of Texas--Austin. VIRUS is the instrument that
enables observations for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy
Experiment HETDEX project,
an experiment designed to learn more
about Dark Energy--a mysterious force in our Universe that astronomers
are only now beginning to be able to describe.
Figure 1: The Hobby-Eberly Telescope with up to 192 spectrographs.
The VIRUS instrument consists of up to 192 identical fiber-fed integral field optical
spectrographs. VIRUS provides a unique challenge in astronomical
instrumentation: each of the 192 instruments must be identical and
each component must be interchangeable amongst every other
spectrograph in order to ease assembly and maintenance of the
instrument. The spectrographs will be assembled production-line-stye,
and will be optically aligned and tested at Texas A&M before being
shipped to McDonald Observatory to be installed on the Hobby-Eberly
Telescope.
Figure 2: Section-view drawing of a pair of VIRUS spectrographs
Figure 3: Picture of an IFU input head assembly in a preliminary plug plate using the first nine fiber bundles, featuring some 4000 individual fibers, which will feed 18 VIRUS-spectrographs.
VIRUS Staff in Summer 2011 with a partially assembled spectrograph
For more information about VIRUS, please see our Publications section.
VIRUS documents