Eikenberry Instrument Projects

Eikenberry Instrumentation Projects

Instruments Currently Under Development:

FLAMINGOS-2: The facility wide-field near-IR imager and multi-object spectrograph (MOS) for the Gemini 8-m telescopes. UF is the primary institution for F2 (PI: S. Eikenberry). First light planned for 2007.	CIRCE: A visitor-class near-IR imager, spectrograph, and polarimeter for the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) 10.4-m telescope. UF is the primary institution for CIRCE (PI: S. Eikenberry). First light planned in 2008.	FRIDA: The facility adaptive optics near-IR imager and integral field spectrograph for the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) 10.4-m telescope. UF is the lead on the integral field unit (PI: S. Eikenberry), with IA-UNAM leading the overall effort (PI: J.A. Lopez). First light planned in 2010.
F2T2: A cryogenic IR tunable filter for the Gemini Genesis Survey with FLAMINGOS-2. UF is the lead USA institute for F2T2 (USA PI: S. Eikenberry), with U. Toronto leading the GGS (PI: R. Abraham). First light planned in 2007-2008.	IRMOS: A design study for the facility multi-object-adaptive-optics multi-IFU near-IR spectrograph for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). UF is the primary insitution for this IRMOS study (PI: S. Eikenberry), in partnership with HIA (Lead: D. Andersen). Study completed in 2006, awaiting TMT next design phase.	HRNIRS: A proposed High-Resolution Near-IR Spectrograph for the Gemini 8-m telescopes. UF is co-leading HRNIRS with NOAO (Overall PI: S. Eikenberry). The UF/NOAO concept was selected for construction by an international review panel in 2005, and awaits funding by Gemini.

Completed Major Instruments:

WIRC is the facility Wide-field InfraRed Camera for the Palomar 200-inch telescope. Cornell was the lead institution for WIRC (PI: S. Eikenberry). Commissioned in late 2002, WIRC is perhaps the most productive of the current generation of wide-field IR cameras (bibliography here -- 58 refereed publications and 1335 citations to them, as of July 2007) -- more publications and citations than FLAMINGOS, ISPI, LIRIS, and WIRCAM combined (!).

FISICA is the Florida Image Slicer for Infrared Cosmology and Astrophyics. It is a visitor instrument, currently living on the KPNO 4m telescope. Results on the telescope show that FISICA may be the most powerful seeing-limited IR IFU in operation right now. FISICA (on the KPNO 4m with ~1-arcsec seeing) is competitive on an equal time basis with GNIRS-IFU (on the Gemini 8m with ~0.5-arcsec seeing)! It is available for observations through collaboration with the instrument team at UF (PI: S. Eikenberry).

Other Instruments I Work On:

MMIRS (clone of FLAMINGOS-2 being built by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
PHARO (facility AO camera for the Palomar 200-inch telescope; built at Cornell by Tom Hayward & Bernhard Brandl; S. Eikenberry acting PI 2000-2003)
SSPM (photon-counting high-speed IR photometers; developed at Harvard, Caltech, and Cornell by S. Eikenberry, D-S. Moon, G. Fazio, S. Ransom, ...)
SIDE (facility intermediate-resolution optical spectrograph being developed for the Gran Telescopio Canarias)
QWEGS (Quantum Well Electron Gain Structures for improved read noise performance in IR detectors -- Jami Meteer's thesis presentation here)