TAIPAN: optical spectroscopy with StarBugs

Kuêhn, K.; Lawrence, Jon; Brown, David M.; Case, Scott W.; Colless, Matthew; Gers, Luke; Gilbert, James; Goodwin, Michael; Hopkins, A. M.; Ireland, Michael; Lorente, Nuria P. F.; Müller, Rolf; Nichani, Vijay; Rakman, Azizi; Richards, Samuel N.; Saunders, Will; Staszak, Nick; Tims, Julia; Waller, Lewis

doi:10.1117/12.2055677

Cited by 18 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The light-weight and flexible nature of the polymer imaging bundles makes them suited to many types of fibre positioning technologies. In addition to use in plugplate instruments, the 1.5 mm polymer imaging bundle has also been proven to be compatible with the Star-Bugs positioning system (Gilbert et al 2012;Kuehn et al 2014), and multiple 0.5 mm polymer imaging bundles will perform the guiding for the multi-object fibre spectrograph instrument, TAIPAN on the UK Schmidt Telescope (Kuehn et al 2014, see Figure 7). Even though there is a loss in efficiency when using the 0.5 mm polymer imaging bundle instead of the 1.5 mm polymer imaging bundle, the smaller core sizes of the 0.5 mm polymer imaging bundle are better suited to the plate scale of the UKST (0.44 to 1.08 arcsec per core respectively, with the latter being too coarse to accurately sample the guide star's point-spread-function).…”

Section: Field Acquisition and Guidingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance of a Novel PMMA Polymer Imaging Bundle for Field Acquisition and Wavefront Sensing

Richards¹,

Leon-Saval²,

Goodwin³

et al. 2017

Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust.

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Imaging bundles provide a convenient way to translate a spatially coherent image, yet conventional imaging bundles made from silica fibre optics typically remain expensive with large losses due to poor filling factors (∼ 40%). We present the characterisation of a novel polymer imaging bundle made from poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) that is considerably cheaper and a better alternative to silica imaging bundles over short distances (∼ 1 m; from the middle to the edge of a telescope's focal plane). The large increase in filling factor (92% for the polymer imaging bundle) outweighs the large increase in optical attenuation from using PMMA (1 dB/m) instead of silica (10 −3 dB/m). We present and discuss current and possible future multiobject applications of the polymer imaging bundle in the context of astronomical instrumentation including: field acquisition, guiding, wavefront sensing, narrow-band imaging, aperture masking, and speckle imaging. The use of PMMA limits its use in low light applications (e.g. imaging of galaxies), however it is possible to fabricate polymer imaging bundles from a range of polymers that are better suited to the desired science.

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Section: Field Acquisition and Guidingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance of a Novel PMMA Polymer Imaging Bundle for Field Acquisition and Wavefront Sensing

Richards¹,

Leon-Saval²,

Goodwin³

et al. 2017

Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust.

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“…Starbugs [3,4] are the next concept in parallel robotic positioning to position optical fibres precisely at the focal plane to catch the light from objects and relay them through optical fibres to stable bench-mounted spectrographs. The AAO has proposed Starbugs as the fiber-positioner for TAIPAN [5] and MANIFEST [6,7] instruments. The goal of Starbugs is to reconfigure typical fields in a several minutes that are typically the downtime between fields to either move the telescope or read the detector.…”

Section: Starbug Devicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The uniformity in the flat illumination is excellent with minimal defects. Tests on the 1.2 m UKST telescope (early tests: proto-TAIPAN [5]) provided acquisition of V~10 magnitude stars with exposures approx. 40 ms (25 fps).…”

Section: Polymer Coherent Imaging Bundlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Miniaturized Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors for starbugs

et al. 2014

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The ability to position multiple miniaturized wavefront sensors precisely over large focal surfaces are advantageous to multi-object adaptive optics. The Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) has prototyped a compact and lightweight Shack-Hartmann wavefront-sensor that fits into a standard Starbug parallel fibre positioning robot. Each device makes use of a polymer coherent fibre imaging bundle to relay an image produced by a microlens array placed at the telescope focal plane to a re-imaging camera mounted elsewhere. The advantages of the polymer fibre bundle are its high-fill factor, high-throughput, low weight, and relatively low cost. Multiple devices can also be multiplexed to a single lownoise camera for cost efficiencies per wavefront sensor. The use of fibre bundles also opens the possibility of applications such as telescope field acquisition, guiding, and seeing monitors to be positioned by Starbugs. We present the design aspects, simulations and laboratory test results.

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“…In this paper we document the initial efforts on the field configuration algorithm (FCA) for the new robotic positioner called "Starbugs" [1], in preparation for the planned TAIPAN (Transforming Astronomical Imaging surveys through Polychromatic Analysis of Nebulae) [2] and MANIFEST (Many Instrument Fiber System) [3,4,5] instruments. The FCA involves two key software sub-modules: allocation and routing, with optimisation to provide the fastest field configuration times that also do not significantly imprint artificial structure on observed target distributions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Field target allocation and routing algorithms for Starbugs

et al. 2014

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Starbugs are miniaturised robotic devices that position optical fibres over a telescope's focal plane in parallel operation for high multiplex spectroscopic surveys. The key advantage of the Starbug positioning system is its potential to configure fields of hundreds of targets in a few minutes, consistent with typical detector readout times. Starbugs have been selected as the positioning technology for the TAIPAN (Transforming Astronomical Imaging surveys through Polychromatic Analysis of Nebulae) instrument, a prototype for MANIFEST (Many Instrument Fiber System) on the GMT (Giant Magellan Telescope). TAIPAN consists of a 150-fibre Starbug positioner accessing the 6 degree field-ofview of the AAO's UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. For TAIPAN, it is important to optimise the target allocation and routing algorithms to provide the fastest configurations times. We present details of the algorithms and results of the simulated performance.

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TAIPAN: optical spectroscopy with StarBugs

Cited by 18 publications

References 8 publications

Performance of a Novel PMMA Polymer Imaging Bundle for Field Acquisition and Wavefront Sensing

Performance of a Novel PMMA Polymer Imaging Bundle for Field Acquisition and Wavefront Sensing

Miniaturized Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors for starbugs

Field target allocation and routing algorithms for Starbugs

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