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A.J. Bunker, J.K. Smith (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK), R.G. Bower (Department of Physics, Durham, UK), Cambridge CIRPASS Team, Durham/Gemini-Observatory GMOS Team
Area spectroscopy has significant advantages over both traditional imaging and long-slit spectroscopy: it is more efficient in observing time, and yields substantially more information. Through Integral Field Units, area spectroscopy is becoming an essential part of new facility instruments on the latest large telescopes. We have recently carried out the first integral field spectroscopy of high redshift galaxies with an 8-m telescope. These observations were part of an international demonstration science program with Gemini Observatory lead by the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, and the University of Durham. In June 2002 we used the optical Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini-North in IFU mode (Allington-Smith et al. 2002, PASP 114, 892). GMOS has a fibre-fed IFU with a 1000 lenslet array covering an area of 5"x7" with 0.2"-diameter lenslets and with a wavelength range of 0.4-1 microns. In August 2002 we commissioned the new near-infrared IFU CIRPASS (Cambridge IR Panoramic Survey Spectrograph, Parry et al. 2000, SPIE 4008, 1193) on Gemini-South. CIRPASS is a fibre-fed spectrograph with a 490 lenslet array covering an area of up to 5"x12" with the 0.36" lenslet scale. CIRPASS operates in the J- and H-bands (1-1.7microns). For both CIRPASS and GMOS we used high resolution gratings with a resolving power of R=4000 (75 km/s FWHM) enabling us to work efficiently between the sky lines: the redshifts of our targets were chosen to have emission lines in "clean" regions of the night sky spectrum. We covered a wide range of targets and science goals, including the nature of high-redshift damped Lyman-alpha absorption systems (see Bunker et al. 2001, astro-ph/0011421) and the star formation and kinematics of high-redshift galaxies. Here we focus on some preliminary results from "3D" spectroscopy of z\approx 1 objects, mapping the emission lines in a 3CR radio galaxy and in a gravitationally lensed arc.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: bunker@ast.cam.ac.uk
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #4
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.