Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS): the metrology camera system

Abstract

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a new optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph designed for the prime focus of the 8.2m Subaru telescope. PFS will cover a 1.3 degree diameter field with 2394 fibers to complement the imaging capabilities of Hyper SuprimeCam. To retain high throughput, the final positioning accuracy between the fibers and observing targets of PFS is required to be less than 10 µ m. The metrology camera system (MCS) serves as the optical encoder of the fiber positioners for configuring of fibers. The MCS locates at the Cassegrain focus of the Subaru telescope to cover the whole focal plane with one 50M pixel CMOS sensor. The information from MCS will be fed into the fiber positioner control system for closed loop control. The MCS was delivered to Subaru Observatory in Apr. 2018 and it had two engineering runs in Oct. 2018 and Aug. 2019. The 1st engineering run concluded that the original mirror supports need to be improved to provide better image quality. The newly designed mirror supports were installed before the 2nd engineering run. The 2nd engineering run result shows that the MCS overall position accuracy is better than 4μm and the image processing time is less than 4 seconds. The MCS is ready for the system integration with other PFS components.