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T. W. Murphy, Jr., B. T. Soifer, K. Matthews (California Institute of Technology), L. Armus (SIRTF Science Center), G. Neugebauer (California Institute of Technology)
Near-infrared integral field spectroscopy of ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) offers a unique way in which to view these morphologically complex galactic mergers. The Palomar Integral Field Spectrograph (PIFS), built specifically for this project, operates on the 200-inch Hale Telescope, providing moderate spectral resolution for a 5.4''\times9.6'' field of view over a wavelength range from 1--2.5 microns. The cryogenic spectrograph employs an all-aluminum, eight-element image slicer, feeding two independent spectrographs within the same dewar. Two resolution modes of R~1300 and R~550 are available, in addition to an imaging mode for photometry and target acquisition.
Morphologically interesting ULIRG candidates for integral field spectroscopy are selected from a longslit K band spectroscopic survey of 33 ULIRGs, which is a component of this thesis work. The presentation will include results from the longslit survey, aimed at searching for hidden signatures from active galactic nuclei (AGN), as well as a description of the integral field spectrograph and example ULIRG datacubes.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://www.its.caltech.edu/~tmurphy/pifs/pifs.html. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: tmurphy@mop.caltech.edu