Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The Subaru Telescope in Hawai’i is adding a new instrument to its arsenal, one that will observe the cosmos through a compound eye.
The compound eye will allow Subaru to observe about 2,400 objects in space, offer an extremely wide field of view and enable the simultaneous spectroscopic observation of thousands of objects. Subaru’s new instrument will allow researchers to answer long-standing questions in astrophysics, chief among them the formation and evolution of galaxies and the universe in which they reside.
The instrument is the Prime Focus Spectrograph, and it is one of the leading instruments in the next era of the Subaru Telescope. The spectrograph will collect light through the visible and some of the near infrared. The telescope improves the telescope’s ability to observe spectra from distant light sources.
“This is just one step towards the ultimate goals of continuing the operation for a long time, producing unprecedented scientific results, and sharing exciting news from Maunakea with the local community to the fullest,” said Naoyuki Tamura, professor of the Subaru Telescope. at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, in an observatory release.
“The discoveries that will be made with this cutting-edge tool are something that all Hawai’i people can be proud of; to be at the center of such a significant international collaboration and human effort,” added Tamura.
The spectrograph team will launch a large sky survey that will take place over the next five years. In total, 360 nights of telescope time will be used to collect data on millions of galaxies and hundreds of thousands of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and our nearest galactic neighbor, Andromeda.
The Subaru telescope is busy. It reveals aspects of the universe from the amount of gases in distant galaxies to the disturbing ephemera of launching missiles over our planet. Last year, Subaru data (especially observations from the telescope’s Hyper Suprime-Cam) revealed two very large ones. merging quasars in the early universe, but the telescope also showed that the Kuiper Belt can be bigger of what was thought before. In other words, the Subaru telescope is multi-talented, and balances its deep space duties with those much closer to home.
Subaru’s new compound eye will build on the legacy of the telescope and give the track to create more history. How exactly will the spectrograph change our understanding of the universe? So you’ll have to check back with Gizmodo in five years, when the telescope’s sky survey is complete.
