The benefits Astronomy could gain by performing multi-slit spectroscopy in a space mission is renown. Digital Micromirror Devices (DMD), developed for consumer applications, represent a potentially powerful solution. They are currently studied in the context of the EUCLID project. EUCLID is a mission dedicated to the study of Dark Energy developed under the ESA Cosmic Vision programme. EUCLID is designed with 3 instruments on-board: a Visual Imager, an Infrared Imager and an Infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph (ENIS). ENIS is focused on the study of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations as the main probe, based on low-resolution spectroscopic observations of a very large number of high-z galaxies, covering a large fraction of the whole sky. To cope with these challenging requirements, a highmultiplexing spectrograph, coupled with a relatively small telescope (1.2m diameter) has been designed. Although the current baseline is to perform slit-less spectroscopy, an important option to increase multiplexing rates is to use DMDs as electronic reconfigurable slit masks. A Texas Instrument 2048x1080 Cinema DMD has been selected, and space validation studies started, as a joint ESA-ENIS Consortium effort. Around DMD, a number of suited optical systems has been developed to project sky sources onto the DMD surface and then, to disperse light onto IR arrays. A detailed study started, both at system and subsystem level, to validate the initial proposal. Here, main results are shown, making clear that the use of DMD devices has great potential in Astronomical Instrumentation.
DMD multi-object spectroscopy in space: the EUCLID study
CIMATTI, ANDREA
2009
Abstract
The benefits Astronomy could gain by performing multi-slit spectroscopy in a space mission is renown. Digital Micromirror Devices (DMD), developed for consumer applications, represent a potentially powerful solution. They are currently studied in the context of the EUCLID project. EUCLID is a mission dedicated to the study of Dark Energy developed under the ESA Cosmic Vision programme. EUCLID is designed with 3 instruments on-board: a Visual Imager, an Infrared Imager and an Infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph (ENIS). ENIS is focused on the study of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations as the main probe, based on low-resolution spectroscopic observations of a very large number of high-z galaxies, covering a large fraction of the whole sky. To cope with these challenging requirements, a highmultiplexing spectrograph, coupled with a relatively small telescope (1.2m diameter) has been designed. Although the current baseline is to perform slit-less spectroscopy, an important option to increase multiplexing rates is to use DMDs as electronic reconfigurable slit masks. A Texas Instrument 2048x1080 Cinema DMD has been selected, and space validation studies started, as a joint ESA-ENIS Consortium effort. Around DMD, a number of suited optical systems has been developed to project sky sources onto the DMD surface and then, to disperse light onto IR arrays. A detailed study started, both at system and subsystem level, to validate the initial proposal. Here, main results are shown, making clear that the use of DMD devices has great potential in Astronomical Instrumentation.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
