AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 173 Instrumentation: Ground Based or Airbourne
Poster, Thursday, 9:20am-4:00pm, January 12, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[173.17] Instrumentation and Technology Development at the Anglo-Australian Observatory

S.C. Barden, J. Bland-Hawthorn (AAO)

The Anglo-Australian Observatory (jointly funded by the UK and Australian governments) has an ongoing technology development and instrumentation program that has yielded forefront astronomical instruments used around the world (e.g. OzPoz on the VLT, 2dF on the AAT).

An overview of the current instrumentation projects underway will be presented. This will cover the recently commissioned AAOmega spectrograph (a bench mounted, dual beam spectrograph fed by the fibers from the 2dF positioner), Echidna (a new technology fiber positioner for the FMOS instrument on Subaru), and WFMOS (a very wide-field MOS system for Subaru that was recently explored in a Feasibility Study for Gemini).

The Instrument Science group at the AAO is actively involved in exploring and exploiting new technologies applicable to astronomical instrumentation. Studies including development of autonomous pickup relays for multi-object instruments (Starbugs), development of OH suppression in fiber optics, and continued evaluation of other ermging fiber optic technologies are presently underway. An overview of those activities will be given.


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