Subject: NIR spectrograph

From: Xiaohui Fan

Submitted: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 16:12:30 -0700 (MST)

Message number: 899 (previous: 898, next: 900 up: Index)

Just a comment on the NIR spectrograph following the user's committee
minutes.

I think triplespec is actually at a quite unique position in the
parameter space of NIR spectrographs, with the combination of
continuous spectral coverage, good throughput and reasonably
high spectral resolution. I am not aware of any other instrument
like that on 4-m class telescope. The only one comes to mind is
GNIRS on Gemini-south, in cross-dispersion mode with R of 2000 or so,
which is one of the truly powerful instrument currently on Gemini.
R of a few thousand is a sweet point between resolving most of the
OH forest and being still sky limited in the dark part of the sky. 
The science that takes advantage of such instrument would require 
a combination of spectral coverage and resolution, and reasonably
faint, but not too faint targets, such as Michael's examples of 
high-z quasar emission line/continuum or brown dwarf/young star
spectroscopy, or galaxy spectroscopy at moderate redshift, e.g.
follow-up of dusty galaxies in Spitzer. But one worry is that
if a 3.5m telescope would be too small for some of the science.
Again this would be if not the only one, one of the very few with
the combination of spectral coverage and resolution on 4-m class telescope,
and besides GNIRS, there are only one or two more being planned
on even larger telescopes.  

 Cheers,
Xiaohui
-- 
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Xiaohui Fan                                                  :"":       
Steward Observatory          Email: fan@as.arizona.edu       :@@:       
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URL: http://sancerre.as.arizona.edu/~fan/                    :  :
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