AAS Meeting #193 - Austin, Texas, January 1999
Session 26. Hobby*Eberly Telescope
Oral, Wednesday, January 6, 1999, 2:00-3:30pm, Ballroom B

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[26.03] High Resolution Spectroscopy with the HET

C. Sneden, R.G. Tull, W.D. Cochran (U. Texas), C.W. Churchill, J.C. Charlton (Penn State U.)

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope will be equipped with a state-of-the-art fiber-coupled high resolution spectrograph (HRS). In this talk we summarize briefly the technical and astronomical performance characteristics of the HRS, and outline several major research efforts to be undertaken with it. For example, direct study of the kinematical and chemical evolution of the interstellar medium in galaxies of all types out to redshift~4 will be accomplished with HRS absorption line spectra of bright background quasars; the maximum HRS spectral resolving power (R~q120,000) will permit more detailed ISM studies than has heretofore been possible with very-large-aperture telescopes. The HRS will provide a superb opportunity to extend the current searches for extra-solar-system planets to a wider, more carefully selected stellar sample; queue scheduling and a highly stable HRS will make the HET ideal for a new high-precision radial velocity survey. The HRS will be employed in very-large-sample studies of the chemical evolution of the Galactic halo and thick disk populations; recently published and ongoing photometric and objective prism surveys have yielded huge target object lists spread over large sky area, well matched to HET's unique operating characteristics. Finally, the HRS will be used to intensively monitor time-variable astronomical phenomena (e.g. active stars, novae/supernovae, and circumstellar ejecta); the key advantage here will be the ability to use the HET's queue scheduling to tailor the observational samples to mesh with the targets' variability timescales.


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