Interview
FOCAS is an optical instrument to be imaging,
spectroscopy, and polarimetry of very faint objects.
It weights about 2 tons, and so is attached to
the Cassegrain focus of the telescope.
Since the focus of FOCAS is to
observe faint objects that can only be seen with
a large telescope like Subaru, it has a multi-object
spectrograph that can take spectra of many objects
at once. Such a capability is a basic necessity
for a large aperture telescope like Subaru.
First Light of FOCAS was in February
2000, when we obtained the image of M82. We were
still learning how to use the instrument at the
time, so the quality of the image was poor compared
to what we can do now, but the image was nonetheless
very popular. Getting such a high quality image
without optimizing the instrument really drives
home the quality of the telescope itself.
I’d like to improve the stability of FOCAS
and keep it at top performance.
(From
a late 2002 interview with Youichi Ohyama, FOCAS
support astronomer.)
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A FOCAS image of the irregular galaxy M82 (12 million
light years away from the Earth) shows extended
emission in the red light of ionized hydrogen produced
by high star-formation activity at the nucleus of
this galaxy.
