The Anglo-Australian Telescope's 2dF Facility

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Session 44 -- The Status of Large Telescope Projects, Instrumentation and Plans for Large Science Projectects in the Areas of Wide-Field Surveys
Oral presentation, Wednesday, June 14, 1995, 2:00pm - 5:30pm

[44.06] The Anglo-Australian Telescope's 2dF Facility

Keith Taylor (Anglo-Australian Observatory)

The AAT has recently acquired a new Prime-focus corrector capable of producing aberration-corrected images over a 2$^\circ$ field of view. This 4-component, atmospheric dispersion compensated, corrector is at the heart of a new and powerful 400-fibre spectroscopic survey facility known as the {\bf 2dF}. The \$2M project represents the largest investment in new technology and instrumentation the AAT has seen in its 20 year life-time; it is hoped that it will provide the telescope with a new and important r\^{o}le for large-scale statistical studies in the last half of the decade and beyond. The 2dF corrector has now been fully commissioned, the automated fibre positioning system has recently seen its first introduction to the telescope, while the two fibre spectrographs are nearing completion. We are presently in the process of commissioning the full working system and expect to be fully operational in the second half of 1995. This talk describes the general characteristics of the system from corrector through spectrographs to data reduction, together with an outline of its expected scientific performance.

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