The construction, alignment, and installation of the VIRUS spectrograph

VIRUS is the massively replicated fiber-fed spectrograph being built for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope to support HETDEX (the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment). The instrument consists of 156 identical channels, fed by 34,944 fibers contained in 78 integral field units, deployed in the 22 arcminute field of the upgraded HET. VIRUS covers 350-550nm at R ≈ 700 and is built to target Lyman α emitters at 1.9 < z < 3.5 to measure the evolution of dark energy. Here we present the assembly line construction of the VIRUS spectrographs, including their alignment and plans for characterization. We briefly discuss plans for installation on the telescope. The spectrographs are being installed on the HET in several stages, and the instrument is due for completion by the end of 2014.

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