Free access article

DOI: 10.1051/aas:1996266

Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series, Vol. 119, November I 1996, 531-546

3D: The next generation near-infrared imaging spectrometer

L. Weitzel, A. Krabbe, H. Kroker, N. Thatte, L.E. Tacconi-Garman, M. Cameron and R. Genzel
Send offprint requests to: A. Krabbe

Max-Planck Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), Postbox 1603, D-85740 Garching, Germany
e-mail: krabbe@mpe-garching.mpg.de

Received November 9, 1995; accepted February 17, 1996

Abstract:

The new MPE near infrared imaging spectrometer 3D represents a new generation of astronomical instrumentation. It is based on a 256 NICMOS-3 Rockwell array and can simultaneously obtain 256 H- or K-band spectra at R= 1100 or 2100 from a square 1616 pixel field on the sky. Typical pixel scales are 0.3/pixel or 0.5/pixel. 3D is a combination of a novel image slicer and a liquid nitrogen cooled long slit spectrometer. It includes high definition on-axis lens optics, a high efficiency directly ruled KRS-5 grism as well as a cold closed-loop piezo-driven tilt mirror allowing full spectral sampling. The instrument efficiency including detector is 15%. Combining the advantages of imaging and spectroscopy increases the observing efficiency on key astronomical objects (e.g. galactic nuclei) by such a large factor over existing grating or Fabry-Perot spectrometers that subarcsecond near-IR spectroscopy of faint Seyferts, starbursts, quasars, or distant galaxy clusters becomes feasible for the first time with 4m-class telescopes. As a portable instrument 3D has already been successfully deployed on several 2 and 4m-class telescopes.

Key words: instrumentation: spectrographs; detectors --- infrared: general

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