Hectospec, the MMT’s 300 Optical Fiber‐Fed Spectrograph

By D. Fabricant, R. Fata, J. Roll, E. Hertz, N. Caldwell, T. Gauron, J. Geary, B. McLeod, A. Szentgyorgyi, Joseph M. Zajac and 17 more. 2005

322 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Hectospec is a 300 optical fiber fed spectrograph commissioned at the MMT in the spring of 2004. In the configuration pioneered by the Autofib instrument at the Anglo‐Australian Telescope, Hectospec’s fiber probes are arranged in a radial “fisherman on the pond” geometry and held in position with small magnets. A pair of high‐speed, six‐axis robots move the 300 fiber buttons between observing configurations within ∼300 s, and to an accuracy of ∼25 μm. The optical fibers run for 26 m between the MMT’s focal surface and the bench spectrograph, operating at R∼1000–2000. Hectochelle, another high‐dispersion bench spectrograph offering R∼35,000, is also available. The system throughput, including all losses in the telescope optics, fibers, and spectrograph, peaks at ∼10% at the grating blaze in 1″ FWHM seeing. Correcting for aperture losses at the 1.″5 diameter fiber entrance aperture, the system throughput peaks at ∼17%, close to our prediction of 20%. Hectospec has proven to be a workhorse instrument at the MMT. Together, Hectospec and Hectochelle have been scheduled for 1/3 of the available nights since its commissioning. Hectospec has returned approximately 60,000 reduced spectra for 16 scientific programs during its first year of operation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

MEASURING THE ULTIMATE HALO MASS OF GALAXY CLUSTERS: REDSHIFTS AND MASS PROFILES FROM THE HECTOSPEC CLUSTER SURVEY (HeCS) (2012, methodology): “…observations indicate that the redshift uncertainties from rvsao are reasonable: Geller et al. (2012a) use 1468 unique pairs of repeat observations to estimate a mean internal error of 56 km s−1 for absorption-line objects and 21 km s−1 for emission-line objects (see also Fabricant et al. 2005).”
Spitzer Observations of the Orion OB1 Association: Disk Census in the Low-Mass Stars (2007, methodology): “…in preparation) using optical spectra obtained at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory with the 1.5 m telescope equipped with the FAST spectrograph (Fabricant et al. 1998), and with the 6.5 mMMT telescope equipped with the Hectospec and Hectochelle multifiber spectrographs (Fabricant et al. 2005).”
The SAGA Survey. I. Satellite Galaxy Populations around Eight Milky Way Analogs (2017, background): “MMT/Hectospec: Hectospec is a fiber-fed spectrograph on the MMT which deploys 300 fibers over a one degree diameter field (Fabricant et al. 2005).”
Black Hole Masses and Eddington Ratios at 0.3 < z < 4 (2005, methodology): “The AGES survey uses the 300-fiber Hectospec robotic spectrograph on the MMT (Fabricant et al. 1998; Roll et al. 1998; Fabricant et al. 2005) to survey galaxies and AGNs in the Boötes field of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey7 (NDWFS; Jannuzi & Dey 1999).”
Spectral Energy Distributions and Multiwavelength Selection of Type 1 Quasars (2006, background): “For the sake of homogeneity, we have excluded the Hectospec-confirmed quasars from Papovich et al. (2005) as they were selected with different criteria than the SDSSconfirmed quasars.”
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS FROM MEASUREMENTS OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE DISCOVERED DURING THE FIRST 1.5 yr OF THE Pan-STARRS1 SURVEY (2013, methodology): “…observations of PS1 targets were obtained with a wide variety of instruments: the Blue Channel Spectrograph (Schmidt et al. 1989) and Hectospec (Fabricant et al. 2005) on the 6.5-m MMT, the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrographs (GMOS; Hook et al. 2004) on both Gemini North and South, the Low…”
LOW-RESOLUTION SPECTRAL TEMPLATES FOR ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI AND GALAXIES FROM 0.03 TO 30 μm (2010, methodology): “AGES is a redshift survey in the NDWFS Boötes field using the 300 fiber robotic Hectospec instrument (Fabricant et al. 2005) on the 6.5 m MMT telescope.”
TOWARD CHARACTERIZATION OF THE TYPE IIP SUPERNOVA PROGENITOR POPULATION: A STATISTICAL SAMPLE OF LIGHT CURVES FROM Pan-STARRS1 (2014, methodology): “Spectra were obtained using the Blue Channel and Hectospec spectrographs of the 6.5 m MMT telescope (Schmidt et al. 1989; Fabricant et al. 2005), the Low Dispersion Survey Spectrograph (LDSS3) and InamoriMagellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS; Dressler et al. 2006) of the 6.5 m Magellan…”
3D-HST WFC3-SELECTED PHOTOMETRIC CATALOGS IN THE FIVE CANDELS/3D-HST FIELDS: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR MASSES (2014, methodology): “We additionally include 72 spectroscopic redshifts determined from MMT/Hectospec data (Fabricant et al. 2005; Mink et al. 2007)32, bringing the total to 455 spectroscopic 32 The MMT/Hectospec data includes about 8 hours in total, observed on November 23, 2011, February 2, 2013, March 31, 2013 and…”
WIDE-FIELD PRECISION KINEMATICS OF THE M87 GLOBULAR CLUSTER SYSTEM (2011, methodology): “Hectospec is a fiber-fed instrument on MMT with 300 fibers covering a 1 degree field of view (Fabricant et al. 2005).”
Measuring Dark Energy Properties with Photometrically Classified Pan-STARRS Supernovae. II. Cosmological Parameters (2017, methodology): “Many of the observations reported here were obtained at the MMT Observatory, a joint facility of the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Arizona.”
THE SDSS-III BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: QUASAR TARGET SELECTION FOR DATA RELEASE NINE (2011, methodology): “Observations of these candidates were carried out in queue mode between 2008 September and 2009 January using the Hectospec multi-fiber spectrograph (Fabricant et al. 2005) on the 6.5m Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT).”
THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, methodology): “1.6 using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), Smithsonian Hectospec Lensing Survey (SHELS), Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe 2 (DEEP2) and the FMOSCOSMOS survey.”
The Complete Light-curve Sample of Spectroscopically Confirmed SNe Ia from Pan-STARRS1 and Cosmological Constraints from the Combined Pantheon Sample (2017, methodology): “Spectroscopic observations of PS1 targets were obtained with a variety of instruments: the Blue Channel Spectrograph (Schmidt et al. 1989) and Hectospec (Fabricant et al. 2005) on the 6.5 m MMT, the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrographs (GMOS; Hook et al. 2004) on both Gemini North and South, the Low Di”
THE MANGA INTEGRAL FIELD UNIT FIBER FEED SYSTEM FOR THE SLOAN 2.5 M TELESCOPE (2014, background): “…a decade ago, when optical fibers with exquisite broad-spectrum transmission in sizes relevant to astronomical application were widely in use (e.g., Fabricant et al. 2005), costs are now lower for high-precision machining of small components (e.g., wire electric discharge machining, EDM), and…”
The Evolving Luminosity Function of Red Galaxies (2006, methodology): “The ongoing AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey (AGES; C. S. Kochanek et al. 2007, in preparation) of Bootes has obtained spectroscopic redshifts of ’16,000 I P 20 galaxies, using the MMT’s Hectospec multiobject spectrograph (Fabricant et al. 2005).”
The Robotic Multiobject Focal Plane System of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) (2022, background): “This is in contrast to the 640 (upgraded to 1,000) fibers on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey focal plane (Smee et al. 2013), which are hand-plugged into arbitrary holes on numerous custom-machined aluminum plates, or the 300 fibers on the MMT Hectospec (Fabricant et al. 2005), which are positioned seri”
THE KEPLER CLUSTER STUDY: STELLAR ROTATION IN NGC 6811 (2011, methodology): “We are conducting a multi-epoch radial-velocity (RV) survey over a 1-degree diameter field centered on NGC6811 using the 6.5m MMT telescope and the Hectochelle multi-objectspectrograph (Szentgyorgyi 2011; Mink et al. 2007; Szentgyorgyi 2006; Fabricant et al. 2005).”
A Significant Population of Very Luminous Dust-Obscured Galaxies at Redshift z ~ 2 (2008, methodology): “The Boötes field is also the target of the AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey (AGES; Kochanek et al. 2008 in preparation), which has measured over 20,000 redshifts for optically bright galaxies (I <∼ 20) and AGN (I <∼ 21.5) using Hectospec (Fabricant et al. 2005) on the MMT.”