Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2012 · 43 citations · 0 references
Natural SciencesAstronomyPhysicsObservational AstronomyOptical AstronomyOpticsObservational TechniquesObservatory InstrumentationObservatory OperationsSpace-based Gamma-ray ObservatoriesTelescope OpticsIntegral Field SpectroscopyLarge-aperture Telescope DesignOptical Telescope SystemsOptical TelescopesTelescopesUpgrade ArchitectureUpgrade Strategy
The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) is an innovative large telescope of 9.2 meter aperture, located in West Texas at the McDonald Observatory (MDO). The HET operates with a fixed segmented primary and has a tracker which moves the four-mirror corrector and prime focus instrument package to track the sidereal and non-sidereal motions of objects. A major upgrade of the HET is in progress that will increase the pupil size to 10 meters and the field of view to 22′ by replacing the corrector, tracker and prime focus instrument package. In addition to supporting the existing suite of instruments, this wide field upgrade will feed a revolutionary new integral field spectrograph called VIRUS, in support of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEXχ). This paper discusses the current status of this upgrade.