The Prototype Telescope and Spectrograph System for the AMASE Project

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cost-effective prototype telescope and spectrograph system for the AMASE project, enabling large-scale sky surveys with high spectral resolution by reducing costs through innovative design choices.

Contribution

It presents the design and cost analysis of a novel, scalable spectrograph system using small-pixel CMOS detectors and commercial lenses for large sky surveys.

Findings

Achieved a 40% cost reduction per fiber compared to existing systems.

Demonstrated the feasibility of high-resolution, large-area surveys with a cost-effective multi-unit design.

Validated the system's potential for ionized gas studies in the Milky Way and beyond.

Abstract

We present the design of the prototype telescope and spectrograph system for the Affordable Multiple Aperture Spectroscopy Explorer (AMASE) project. AMASE is a planned project that will pair 100 identical multi-fiber spectrographs with a large array of telephoto lenses to achieve a large area integral field spectroscopy survey of the sky at the spatial resolution of half an arcminute and a spectral resolution of R=15,000, covering important emission lines in the optical for studying the ionized gas in the Milky Way and beyond. The project will be enabled by a significant reduction in the cost of each spectrograph unit, which is achieved by reducing the beam width and the use of small-pixel CMOS detectors, 50um-core optical fibers, and commercial photographic lenses in the spectrograph. Although constrained by the challenging high spectral resolution requirement, we realize a 40% reduction in cost per fiber at constant etendue relative to, e.g., DESI. As the reduction of cost is much more significant than the reduction in the amount of light received per fiber, replicating such a system many times is more cost effective than building a single large spectrograph that achieves the same survey speed. We present the design of the prototype telescope and instrument system and the study of its cost effectiveness.