4MOST-4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope

Summary, in English

4MOST is a wide-field, high-multiplex spectroscopic survey facility under development for the VISTA telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Its main science drivers are in the fields of galactic archeology, high-energy physics, galaxy evolution and cosmology. 4MOST will in particular provide the spectroscopic complements to the large area surveys coming from space missions like Gaia, eROSITA, Euclid, and PLATO and from ground-based facilities like VISTA, VST, DES, LSST and SKA. The 4MOST baseline concept features a 2.5 degree diameter field-of-view with similar to 2400 fibres in the focal surface that are configured by a fibre positioner based on the tilting spine principle. The fibres feed two types of spectrographs; similar to 1600 fibres go to two spectrographs with resolution R> 5000 (lambda similar to 390-930 nm) and similar to 800 fibres to a spectrograph with R> 18,000 (lambda similar to 392-437 nm & 515-572 nm & 605-675 nm). Both types of spectrographs are fixed-configuration, three-channel spectrographs. 4MOST will have an unique operations concept in which 5 year public surveys from both the consortium and the ESO community will be combined and observed in parallel during each exposure, resulting in more than 25 million spectra of targets spread over a large fraction of the southern sky. The 4MOST Facility Simulator (4FS) was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of this observing concept. 4MOST has been accepted for implementation by ESO with operations expected to start by the end of 2020. This paper provides a top-level overview of the 4MOST facility, while other papers in these proceedings provide more detailed descriptions of the instrument concept[1], the instrument requirements development[2], the systems engineering implementation[3], the instrument model[4], the fibre positioner concepts[5], the fibre feed[6], and the spectrographs[7].

• Author: Roelof S. de Jong; Sam Barden; Olga Bellido-Tirado; Joar Brynnel; Cristina Chiappini; Eric Depagne; Roger Haynes; Diane Johl; Daniel P. Phillips; Olivier Schnurr; Axel Schwope; Jakob Walcher; Svend-Marian Bauer; Gabriele Cescutti; Maria-Rosa Cioni; Frank Dionies; Harry Enke; Dionne Haynes; Andreas Kelz; Francisco S. Kitaura; Georg Lamer; Ivan Minchev; Volker Mueler; Sebastian E. Nuza; Jean-Christophe Olaya; Tilman Piffl; Emil Popow; Allar Saviauk; Matthias Steinmetz; Ugur Ural; Monica Valentini; Roland Winkler; Lutz Wisotzki; Wolfgang R. Ansorge; Manda Banerji; Eduardo Gonzalez Solares; Mike Irwin; Robert C. Kennicutt Jr.; David King; Richard McMahon; Sergey Koposov; Ian R. Parry; Xiaowei Sun; Nicholas A. Walton; Gert Finger; Olaf Iwert; Mirko Krumpe; Jean-Louis Lizon; Vincenzo Mainieri; Jean-Philippe Amans; Piercarlo Bonifacio; Mathieu Cohen; Patrick Francois; Pascal Jagourel; Shan B. Mignot; Frederic Royer; Paola Sartoretti; Ralf Bender; Hans-Joachim Hess; Florian Lang-Bardl; Bernard Muschielok; Jorg Schlichter; Hans Bohringer; Thomas Boller; Angela Bongiorno; Marcella Brusa; Tom Dwelly; Andrea Merloni; Kirpal Nandra; Mara Salvato; Johannes H. Pragt; Ramon Navarro; Gerrit Gerlofsma; Ronald Roelfsema; Gavin B. Dalton; Kevin F. Middleton; Ian A. Tosh; Corrado Boeche; Elisabetta Caffau; Norbert Chistlieb; Eva K. Grebel; Camilla J. Hansen; Andreas Koch; Hans-G. Ludwig; Holger Mandel; Andreas Quirrenbach; Luca Sbordone; Walter Seifert; Guido Thimm; Amina Helmi; Scott C. Trager; Thomas Bensby; Sofia Feltzing; Gregory Ruchti; Bengt Edvardsson; Andreas Korn; Krain Lind; Wilfried Boland; Matthew Colless; Gabriella Frost; James Gilbert; Peter Gillingham; Jon Lawrence; Neville Legg; Will Saunders; Andrew Sheinis; Simon Driver; Aaron Robotham; Roland Bacon; Patrick Caillier; Johan Kosmalski; Florence Laurent; Johan Richard
• Department/s: Lund Observatory - Undergoing reorganization
• Publishing year: 2014
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V
• Volume: 9147
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2055826
• Document type: Conference paper
• Publisher: SPIE
• Topic: Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
• Keywords: Wide-field multi-object spectrograph facility; VISTA telescope; tilting-spine fibre postioner; wide field corrector; facility simulator; science operations; Gaia; eROSITA
• Conference name: 5th Conference on Ground-Based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy
• Conference date: 2014-06-22 - 2014-06-26
• Conference place: Montreal, Canada
• Status: Published
• Project: 4MOST - massive spectroscopic surveys of the Milky Way and the Universe; The New Milky Way
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0277-786X; ISSN: 1996-756X