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[173.10] FISICA: The Florida Image Slicer for Infrared Astrophysics and Cosmology

S. N. Raines, S. S. Eikenberry, R. Elston, R. Guzman, N. Gruel, J. Julian (University of Florida), G. Boreman (CREOL, U. Central Florida), J. Hoffman, M. Rodgers (Optical Research Associates), P. Glenn, G. Hull-Allen (Bauer Associates), B. Myrick, S. Flint, L. Comstock (Corning NetOptix)

We report on the design, manufacture, and scientific performance of the Florida Image Slicer for Infrared Astrophysics and Cosmology (FISICA) - a fully cryogenic all-reflective image slicing integral field unit for the FLAMINGOS near-infrared spectrograph. Originally conceived as a bench-top demonstration proof-of-concept instrument, after three productive engineering runs at the KPNO 4-m telescope (as of 15 Oct 2005) we find that FISICA is capable of delivering excellent scientific results. It now operates as a 'turnkey' instrument at the KPNO 4-m telescope. FISICA is now open for community access as a visitor instrument on the KPNO 4-m telescope via collaboration with the instrument team, who can assist with the proposal preparation and observations, as well as provide the data reduction tools for integral field spectroscopy. We review the optical and opto-mechanical design, fabrication, laboratory test results, and on-telescope performance for FISICA.

Designed to accept input beams near f/15, FISICA with FLAMINGOS slices a 16x33 arcsec field of view into 22 parallel elements using three sets of monolithic powered mirror arrays, each with 22 mirrored surfaces cut into a single piece of aluminum. However, slight vignetting for some field positions limits the effective field of view to 15x32 arcsec. The effective spatial sampling of 0.70 arcsec delivers 960 spatial resolution elements. Combined with the FLAMINGOS spectrograph, R~1300 spectroscopy over the 1-2.4 micron wavelength range is possible, in either the J+H combined bandpass or the H+K combined bandpass.

FISICA was funded by the UCF-UF Space Research Initiative; FLAMINGOS was designed and was constructed by the IR Instrumentation Group (PI: R. Elston) at the University of Florida, Department of Astronomy, with support from NSF grant AST97-31180 and Kitt Peak National Observatory.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.