Shan Mignot

Maunakea spectroscopic explorer advancing from conceptual design

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) project has completed its Conceptual Design Phase. This paper is a status report of the MSE project regarding its technical and programmatic progress. The technical status includes its conceptual design and system performance, and highlights findings and recommendations from the System and various subsystems design reviews. The programmatic status includes the project organization and management plan for the Preliminary Design Phase. In addition, this paper provides the latest information related to the permitting process for Maunakea construction.

Maunakea spectroscopic explorer design development from feasibility concept to baseline design

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer is designed to be the largest non-ELT optical/NIR astronomical telescope, and will be a fully dedicated facility for multi-object spectroscopy over a broad range of spectral resolutions. The MSE design has progressed from feasibility concept into its current baseline design where the system configuration of main systems such as telescope, enclosure, summit facilities and instrument are fully defined. This paper will describe the engineering development of the main systems, and discuss the trade studies to determine the optimal telescope and multiplexing designs and how their findings are incorporated in the current baseline design.

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer: throughput optimization

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) will obtain millions of optical to near-infrared spectra, at low (R~2,500) to high (R~40,000) spectral resolution, via a highly multiplexed (~3000) fiber-fed system. Key science programs for MSE (black hole reverberation mapping, stellar population analysis at high redshift, subkm/ s velocity accuracy for stellar astrophysics) will target faint Galactic and extra-galactic targets (typical visual magnitudes up to 24). MSE will thus need to achieve the highest throughput possible over the 360 to 1800 nm wavelength range. Here we discuss building an optimized throughput budget in terms of performance allocation and technical solutions to steer the concept design studies.

Systems budgets architecture and development for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) project is an enterprise to upgrade the existing Canada-France- Hawaii observatory into a spectroscopic facility based on a 10 meter-class telescope. As such, the project relies on engineering requirements not limited only to its instruments (the low, medium and high resolution spectrographs) but for the whole observatory. The science requirements, the operations concept, the project management and the applicable regulations are the basis from which these requirements are initially derived, yet they do not form hierarchies as each may serve several purposes, that is, pertain to several budgets. Completeness and consistency are hence the main systems engineering challenges for such a large project as MSE. Special attention is devoted to ensuring the traceability of requirements via parametric models, derivation documents, simulations, and finally maintaining KAOS diagrams and a database under IBM Rational DOORS linking them together. This paper will present the architecture of the main budgets under development and the associated processes, expand to highlight those that are interrelated and how the system, as a whole, is then optimized by modelling and analysis of the pertinent system parameters.

The science calibration challenges of next generation highly multiplexed optical spectroscopy: the case of the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer

MSE is an 11.25m telescope with a 1.5 sq.deg. field of view. It can simultaneously obtain 3249 spectra at R = 3000 from 360−1800nm, and 1083 spectra at R = 40000 in the optical. The large field of view, large number of targets, as well as the use of more than 4000 optical fibres to transport the light from the focal plane to the spectrographs, means that precise and accurate science calibration is difficult but essential to obtaining the science goals. As a large aperture telescope focusing on the faint Universe, precision sky subtraction and spectrophotometry are especially important. Here, we discuss the science calibration requirements, and the adopted calibration strategy, including operational features and hardware, that will enable the successful scientific exploitation of the vast MSE dataset.

Velocity and abundance precisions for future high-resolution spectroscopic surveys

In preparation for future, large-scale, multi-object, hig h-resolution spectroscopic surveys of the Galaxy, we present a series of tests of the precision in radial velocity and chemi cal abundances that any such project can achieve at a 4 m class telescope. We briefly discuss a number of science cases that aim at studying the chemo-dynamical history of the major Galactic components (bulge, thin and thick disks, and halo) ‐ either as a follow-up to the Gaia mission or on their own merits. Based on a large grid of synthetic spectra that cover the full range in stellar parameters of typical survey targets, we devise an optimal wavelength range and argue for a moderately high-resolution spectrograph. As a result, the kinematic precision is not limited by any of these factors, but will practically only suffer from systematic effects, ea sily reaching uncertainties <1kms −1 . Under realistic survey conditions (namely, considering stars brighter than r = 16 mag with reasonable exposure times) we prefer an ideal resolving power of R ∼20000 on average, for an overall wavelength range (with a common two-arm spectrograph design) of [395;456.5] nm and [587;673] nm. We show for the first time on a general basis that it is possible to measure chemical abundance ratios to better than 0.1 dex for many species (Fe, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Na, Al, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Y, Ba, Nd, Eu) and to an accuracy of about 0.2 dex for other species such as Zr, La, and Sr. While our feasibility study was explicitly carried o ut for the 4MOST facility, the results can be readily applied to and used for any other conceptual design study for high-resolution spectrographs.