The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts project will provide the unique capability of carrying out multi-fiber spectroscopy of 2400 cosmological/astrophysical targets simultaneously with an 8-10 meter class telescope. A microlens is attached at each fiber entrance for F-ratio transformation into a larger one so that difficulties of spectrograph design are eased. Fibers are accurately placed onto target positions by positioners, each of which consists of two stages of piezo-electric rotary motors, through iterations by using back-illuminated fiber position measurements with a wide-field metrology camera. Fibers then carry light to a set of four identical fast-Schmidt spectrographs with three color arms each: the wavelength ranges from 0.38 um to 1.3 um will be simultaneously observed with an average resolving power of 3000.
JPL Robotics is providing the fiber positioner software module to monitor and control the fiber positions. The operation would be performed for 2400 fiber positioners in parallel.
This effort is funded by the
Subaru Telescope.
