About the Project
Hector is a multi-hexabundle integral-field-unit fibre system and spectrograph delivered to the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in 2022. It incorporates a new positioning system using the 2df corrector. This instrument concept builds on the success of the SAMI instrument which completed a large spatially resolved galaxy survey from 2013-2019. The Hector concept was selected by the Australian astronomical community as one of two key new facilities for the AAT. The overall Hector project is led from Astralis-USyd, who are also responsible for the hexabundles, the fibre cable, and the (plug-plate) positioning robot.
Within Hector, AAO were responsible for the design and construction of the spectrograph and the telescope interfaces. The Hector spectrograph is a fixed-format all-refractive dual-arm design incorporating a number of highly aspheric optics with volume phase holographic grating dispersers mounted in a space frame. It achieves a spectral resolution up to R~7000 over a 400 nm range in the optical for 900 fibres.