Subaru Telescope

The Subaru telescope is one of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan on Mauna Kea Observatory ( Hawaii) in 4139 m height operated reflecting telescope with a 8.2 m primary mirror diameter.

The Subaru telescope is located on the extinct volcano Mauna Kea, right next to the two Keck telescopes and other large telescopes. Principal of the building was the Japanese government.

First Light of the Subaru telescope was on 28 January 1999.

The telescope is designed for observations in the visible and infrared range. Supporting technical facilities are located in a base station in Hilo.

Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster ( Pleiades ).

Technical specifications

The 8.2 m wide, made ​​of ULE ( ultra low expansion glass) Corning primary mirror made ​​has a thickness of 20 cm and weighs 22.8 tons. The primary mirror has a focal length of 15 m and an average surface roughness of 14 nm

The telescope has an alt- azimuth mount is designed for the optical system like a Ritchey -Chrétien Cassegrain telescope. It is 22.2 meters high and weighs 555 tons. Observations can be made to four focal points:

  • In the primary focus ( F2, 0), the Subaru Prime Focus Camera is ( Suprime - Cam).
  • The Cassegrain focus ( F12, 2) supports a number of different instruments, whose resolution by the adaptive optics system (AO system ) is improved. Faint Object Camera And Spectrograph ( FOCAS )
  • Cooled Mid- Infrared Camera and Spectrograph ( COMICS)
  • Infrared Camera and Spectrograph ( IRCS )
  • Corona Graphic Imager with Adaptive Optics ( CIAO )
  • The optical Nasmythfokus (F12, 6 ) is designed for the accommodation of heavy equipment. This includes in particular the High Dispersion Spectrograph ( HDS)
  • The infrared Nasmythfokus ( F13, 6) housed first the OH airglow suppressor ( OHS ) with its receiving unit CISCO.

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

The building to the telescope is 43 m high, has a diameter at the base of 40 m and weighs about 2000 tons. The outer shell is made of aluminum plates.

View of the primary mirror

Actuators of the primary mirror (to be renewed during the coating )

Scientific Results

Earliest galaxies

The Subaru Deep Field ago the Hubble Deep Field similar to that of the temporal "depth", but has a much larger extent. Here a galaxy was discovered with a redshift of 7 among others in October 2007. This corresponds to a distance 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. Already in 2006, the Subaru telescope had discovered a galaxy with the then highest, spectrographically confirmed redshift.

Earliest filament

In co-operation from the VIMOS instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope and FOCAS instrument of Subaru 2009, the largest ever collection of galaxies ( filament) was found in the early universe by spectrographic studies. The filament can be found in the vicinity of the galaxy cluster CL0016, about 6.7 billion light years away and has about 10,000 times the mass of our Milky Way.

Mauna Kea Observatories W. M. Keck Observatory First light (astronomy) Cassegrain reflector Nasmyth telescope Light-year Galaxy filament
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