Palomar 200-inch Telescope:

PIFS-Palomar Integral Field Spectrograph

Status: Private Instrument; (T. Soifer, K Matthews)

Instrument: Image slicing spectrograph

Field of View:

• 5.4" x 9.6", rotatable to any position angle

Slit Width:

• 0.67", or 4 pixels

Pixel Scale:

• 0.167" per pixel with D80

• 0.125" per pixel with D78

IR Detectors:

• D80;256 x 256 HgCdTe, 1-2.5 micron

• D78;256 x 256 InSb 1-5 micron, (does not cover entire PIFS field of view)

Input:

• f/70 tip/tilt corrected beam

Output:

• f/70 beam matched to focal plane of imaging camera.

Resolution:

• High Resolution R = 1300

• Low Resolution R = 550

Spectral Coverage:

• 5,000 km/sec in High Resolution mode

• 12,000 km/sec in Low Resolution mode

Velocity Precision:

• 10-20 km/sec on high signal to noise narrow lines.

Flexure:

• Less than one pixel at the focal plane for large telescope motion.

Total Throughput:

• PIFS alone 58%. Total system including atmosphere, telescope, and camera is about 22%.

Sensitivity:

• Sensitivity: 5x10-16 erg s-1 cm-2 at the 3-sigma level in 30 minutes of integration for a spatially and spectrally unresolved line emission source in 1-arcsecond seeing.

• In the best of seeing conditions (0.5 arcsec), predicted sensitivity is a K=18 (0.04 mJy) continuum source at 5-sigma in one hour of integration.

LN2 Hold Time:

• In excess of three days in lab.

Imaging Mode:

• Full field imaging capability for target acquisition.