The Subaru Telescope in Hawai‘i is set to enhance its capabilities with a groundbreaking new instrument, the Prime Focus Spectrograph, which will allow it to observe the cosmos with a “compound eye.
This advanced instrument will provide a much broader field of view, enabling the Subaru Telescope to observe approximately 2,400 objects simultaneously, facilitating spectroscopic analysis of thousands of space objects.
The spectrograph will collect light across the visible and near-infrared spectrum, significantly improving the telescope’s ability to study distant light sources and deepen our understanding of cosmic phenomena.
One of the primary goals of this new addition is to shed light on the formation and evolution of galaxies, providing invaluable insights into the universe’s history. The spectrograph’s contributions will be key to answering longstanding astrophysical questions.
Over the next five years, a large-sky survey will be conducted, with the team utilizing 360 nights of telescope time to gather data on millions of galaxies, along with hundreds of thousands of stars in our Milky Way and Andromeda.
This new instrument builds on Subaru’s legacy of scientific discoveries, such as last year’s revelation of merging quasars and insights into the expanding Kuiper Belt.
The new compound eye represents a major leap in the Subaru Telescope’s research potential, bringing unprecedented scientific output.
The results of the sky survey are expected to further deepen our cosmic knowledge, with its full impact becoming clearer in about five years, when the survey is completed.
As Naoyuki Tamura, a professor at the Subaru Telescope, stated, the discoveries made with this instrument will not only be of global scientific significance but will also be a point of pride for Hawai‘i and its role in this international collaboration.