MgII Absorbers at High Redshift Using J-Band High Resolution Spectroscopy on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

使用 Hobby-Eberly 望远镜上的 J 波段高分辨率光谱分析高红移的 MgII 吸收体

• 批准号: 0123885
• 负责人: Christopher Churchill
• 金额: $ 5.8万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-08-01 至 2003-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0123885&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: MgII; Absorbers; Redshift; Using; Band

ABSTRACT AST 0123885Churchill This is a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) project to modify and test an infrared camera and spectrograph (the JCAM) which will be used to obtain spectra on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas. This data will then be used to test the suitability of the modified equipment for measuring spectra of very faint Quasars in the wavelength range of 0.95 to 1.35 millimicrons which corresponds to redshifts of z= 2.4 to 3.8 In the MgII, 2796 - 2803 Angstrom absorption line. The potential scientific impact of obtaining this data for Quasar research is very high. There is a risk that this potentially very important data may not be obtainable with the HET. Extrapolating from the present performance of the telescope in the visual, it is clear that the proposed, modified spectrograph is expected to be useful for obtaining data on sources brighter than V=17 mag. However, the quasars at this redshift range lie in the magnitude range V=18 to 19 mag. Simulations show that the absorption lines in the quasars are detectable against the night sky background for 18th mag objects with an image disk of 1.5 arc seconds but the HET does not at present have the long-term, on-target stability necessary to maintain image sizes of 1.3 to 1.5 arc seconds. Although a telescope upgrade may provide the necessary image quality, the only meaningful way to determine the limiting capabilities of this instrument is to conduct actual tests. Funding for this project was provided by the NSF program for Extragalactic Astronomy & Cosmology (AST/EXC).***

这是一项小型探索性研究（SGER）项目，用于修改和测试红外相机和光谱仪（JCAM），该红外相机和光谱仪将用于获取德克萨斯大学麦克唐纳天文台霍比-埃伯利望远镜（HET）的光谱。这些数据将用于测试改进后的设备是否适合测量波长范围为0.95至1.35微米的非常微弱的类星体的光谱，在MgII， 2796 - 2803埃吸收线中对应于z= 2.4至3.8的红移。获得类星体研究数据的潜在科学影响是非常高的。有一种风险是，这些潜在的非常重要的数据可能无法通过HET获得。从目前望远镜在视觉上的表现推断，很明显，拟议的改进光谱仪有望用于获取比V=17等更亮的光源的数据。在这个红移范围内的类星体位于V=18到19等的范围内。模拟表明，在夜空背景下，类星体的吸收线是可以探测到的，18等天体的像盘为1.5弧秒，但HET目前还没有长期的、目标上的稳定性，需要维持1.3到1.5弧秒的像盘。虽然升级望远镜可以提供必要的图像质量，但确定该仪器的极限能力的唯一有意义的方法是进行实际测试。本项目由美国国家科学基金会星系外天文学和宇宙学项目（AST/EXC）资助