Andrew Sheinis

Australian Astronomical Observatory

Title:

What's New at the AAO: an Update on new science and instrumentation in Sydney
 
Abstract:
 
I will present a brief overview of the new and ongoing instrumentation projects at the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) in Sydney.  The AAO develops instrumentation for the AAT in Siding Springs Australia as well as internationally for groups such as Gemini, ESO, and the GMT telescopes.  I will talk about the recently completed project, the HERMES Spectrograph which is gathering medium to high-resolution spectra of 1 million stars in the Milky Way , thereby developing detailed abundances for these stars in order to better understand that mass assembly history of the Milky Way.  I will also talk about the Taipan Project, a 500,000 galaxy survey using the new "Starbugs" technology, based on small robots which position each fiber in parallel. In addition I will talk about the AESOP positioner for 4MOST/ESO, based on the ECHIDNA spine-type positioner which was used on FMOS Echidna at Subaru.  Lastly I will talk about new projects in development such as Manifest for GMT,OH suppression suppression fibers, photonics lanterns, miniature photonics spectrographs and several technologies for fiber-based IFUs.