SPIRAL Phase A: A Prototype Integral Field Spectrograph for the Anglo-AustralianTelescope

Abstract

We present details of a prototype fiber feed for use on the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) that uses a dedicated fiber-fed medium/high-resolution (R~=10,000) visible-band spectrograph to give integral field spectroscopy (IFS) of an extended object. A focal reducer couples light from the telescope to the close-packed lenslet array and fiber feed, allowing the spectrograph be used on other telescopes with the change of a single lens. By considering the properties of the fibers in the design of the spectrograph, an efficient design can be realized; we present the first scientific results of a prototype spectrograph using a fiber feed with 37 spatial elements, namely, the detection of lithium confirming a brown dwarf candidate and IFS of the supernova remnant SN 1987A.