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1 m – APOGEE Feed. Jon Holtzman Diane Feuillet (NMSU). Construction and implementation of fiber feed from NMSU 1m to SDSS APOGEE funded by SDSS-III project and, especially, time of Nick MacDonald
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1 m – APOGEE Feed Jon Holtzman Diane Feuillet (NMSU)
Construction and implementation of fiber feed from NMSU 1m to SDSS APOGEE funded by SDSS-III project and, especially, time of Nick MacDonald • Builds off existing instrument at NA2 port on 1m, which has a pickoff mirror and camera for acquisition and guiding; note no image derotator at NA2 NMSU 1m has been used primarily in robotic mode for imaging
Work to date • Fiber installed in the fall • Software developed for control of APOGEE from 1m control system • Initial test on handful of nights • Initial implementation of robotic observing for bright stars, 50+ stars per night seems plausible • Telescope performance (pointing stability) poorer than expected, investigation in progress • Throughput seems poorer than expected • Only crude data reduction so far • Sky subtraction and, especially, telluric correction TBD
Status • While we hope for improved performance, even with current performance, bright star program is probably feasible • Original commitment was to give 3 nights/month to SDSS in exchange for implementation and use of instrument • NMSU potentially interested in using significantly more , if robotic observing is feasible (but still would consider as collaboration data) • In context of SDSS-IV, allows additional use of a northern spectrograph
Project(s) • As initially suggested by Leo Girardi, nearby sample of giants with known distances • Homogeneous sample with APOGEE • Estimate ages • Calibration of APOGEE • Test stellar evolution models • Bright calibrators, stars of special interest (e.g. s-process rich stars) • Bright asteroseismology stars • Planet hosts • As capability is demonstrated, we will solicit additional proposals • RV followup for fainter stars?
Hope to have more time to work on this in next several months! Will try to start implementation of bright star program in next dark run