Subaru telescope

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The Subaru telescope is one of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan on the Mauna Kea Observatories ( Hawaii operated) in 4139 m reflecting telescope with 8.2 m primary mirror diameter. The telescope is set up for observations in visible light and in the infrared range .

Subaru Telescope Building

The Subaru telescope is located on the extinct Mauna Kea volcano , right next to the two Keck telescopes and other large telescopes. Supporting technical facilities are located in a base station in Hilo .

The first light of the Subaru telescope was on January 28, 1999. The Japanese government commissioned the construction . Subaru is the Japanese name for the star cluster of the Pleiades (seven stars ).

technology

The 8.2 m main mirror made of ULE (ultra low expansion glass) from Corning is 20 cm thick and weighs 22.8 t. It is made of hexagonal segments welded together. The main mirror has a focal length of 15 m and an average surface roughness of 14 nm.

The telescope has an old-azimuthal mount while the optical system is designed like a Ritchey-Chrétien-Cassegrain telescope . It is 22.2 m high and weighs 555 t. Observations can be made at four focal points :

  • In the primary focus (F2.0) is the Subaru Prime Focus Camera (Suprime-Cam) , since 2012 the Hyper Suprime-Cam , which images a sky region of 1.8 square degrees on an 870 MPixel CCD image sensor .
  • The Cassegrain Focus (F12,2) supports a number of different instruments, the resolution of which is improved by the adaptive optics system (AO system) .
    • Faint Object Camera And Spectrograph (FOCAS)
    • Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (COMICS)
    • Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (IRCS)
    • Coronagraphic Imager with Adaptive Optics (CIAO)
  • Nasmythfoki
    • The optical nasmyth focus (F12.6) is designed to accommodate heavy equipment. Above all, this includes the High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS)
    • The infrared nasal focus (F13.6) initially housed the OH- Airglow Suppressor (OHS) with its CISCO recording unit .

The maximum swivel speed is 0.5 ° / s. The Subaru telescope achieves a tracking accuracy of 0.1 "and an alignment accuracy in blind operation of better than 1.0". The best angular resolution without adaptive optics is 0.2 " at a wavelength of 2150 nm.

The building around the telescope is 43 m high, has a diameter of 40 m at the base and has a mass of about 2000 t. The outer shell consists of aluminum plates.

  • From above: secondary mirror, Serruier tube, primary mirror cell with the MOIRCS in the Cassegrain focus

  • View of the primary mirror

  • Actuators of the primary mirror (during which coating is renewed)

Scientific results

Earliest galaxies

The Subaru Deep Field is similar to the Hubble Deep Field in terms of its temporal "depth" , but is much larger in size. Among other things, a galaxy with a redshift of 7 was discovered here in October 2007 . This corresponds to a distance of about 12.88 billion light years . The observed light left the galaxy at a time when the Big Bang was only 780 million years ago. As early as 2006, the Subaru telescope had discovered a galaxy with the then highest, spectrographically confirmed redshift.

Earliest filament

In 2009, in collaboration with the VIMOS instrument at ESO's Very Large Telescope and the FOCAS instrument from Subaru, spectrographic investigations found the largest accumulation of galaxies ( filament ) in the early universe to date . The filament is found near the galaxy cluster CL0016 , is about 6.7 billion light years away and has a mass about 10,000 times the mass of our Milky Way .

The most distant object in our solar system

With the Subaru telescope, the discovery of 2018 VG 18 was made . The potential dwarf planet is currently (as of December 2018) the furthest known object in our solar system from its central star .

Web links

Commons : Subaru Telescope  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.corning.com/media/worldwide/csm/documents/Corning_Supplier_of_Multiple.pdf
  2. ↑ a b c d Specifications - Subaru Telescope . naoj.org
  3. ↑ https://hsc.mtk.nao.ac.jp/ssp/instrument/#hyper
  4. ↑ Access: A galaxy at a redshift z | [equals] | 6.96. Nature
  5. ↑ eso0941 - Shedding Light on the Cosmic Skeleton . ESO

Coordinates: 19 ° 49'32 "  N , 155 ° 28'35"  W.