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Gemini Near-Infrared Integral-Field Spectrograph (NIFS) Overview.


Gemini Near-Infrared Integral-Field Spectrograph (NIFS)


Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics    AUSPACE Ltd. Institute for Astronomy


NIFS Overview

NIFS is designed to be a fast-tracked, low-cost, near-infrared, integral-field spectrograph for use on Gemini North with the facility adaptive optics system, ALTAIR. The aim is to provide an optimised near-infrared spectroscopic capability at the Gemini telescope on the shortest possible timescale and at modest cost. The design of the instrument is based on the premise that under these constraints the Gemini consortium will be best served by a targeted instrument which produces data of the highest quality for a restricted range of applications.

NIFS will achieve economies in cost and schedule in several ways:

  • By addressing targeted science with high efficiency: NIFS will primarily target velocity measurements in galaxies to study the demographics of black holes in galactic nuclei and the excitation of the inner narrow-line regions of nearby Seyfert galaxies. However, NIFS will also be applied to a wide range of general astronomical topics, but these will not dictate the instrument design.

  • By adopting a largely fixed-format design: A 3.0"×3.0" "stair-case" integral field unit (IFU) will feed a near-infrared spectrograph with five fixed-angle gratings mounted on a single grating wheel. A single, fixed-format camera will form the spectral image on a 2048×2048 pixel Rockwell HgCdTe HAWAII-2 array. Two-pixel spectral resolving powers of about 5300 will be achieved with complete wavelength coverage in each of the J, H, and K photometric bands through 29 optimally sampled 0.1" wide slitlets. The velocity resolution of about 55 km s-1 will be sufficient to achieve the targeted science objectives, and will allow software rejection of OH airglow lines.

  • By packaging the NIFS instrument within a duplicate of the NIRI cryostat: NIRI is the Gemini North Near-InfraRed Imager constructed by the University of Hawaii. The NIRI cryostat, On-Instrument Wavefront Sensor (OIWFS), control system, and EPICS software will all be duplicated with only minimal change.

    [NIFS in vacuum jacket]

    Light enters at top through the cryostat window and comes to focus 300 mm inside the cryostat at the focal plane mask wheel. The 3.0" x 3.0" field passes to a focal ratio converter mirror which reimages the telescope exit pupil on a cold stop to baffle the system. The f/256 beams pass through a filter wheel seen near the top of the cold work surface plate in the figure and focus on a reflective image slicer at top-left which directs each slice of the focal plane to a different element of the pupil mirror array at top-right where 29 toroidal mirrors reimage the f/16 focal plane in the form of a 64 mm long "staircase" slit on the field mirror array. The 29 field mirrors direct the beams into the spectrograph so that their pupils all coincide on the grating at bottom-left. The spectrograph uses a Bouwers collimator consisting of a spherical mirror and a concentric refractive shell to correct spherical aberration. The pupil mirror array, field mirror array, spectrograph collimator mirror, and its corrector are all concentric about the image slicer so that each of the 29 channels is optically identical. A refractive camera views the diffracted light from the grating with a 30° Ebert angle and focuses spectra from the 29 slitlets onto the detector at bottom-right.



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