Hydra, open to view

About this image

The WIYN Hydra fiber positioner uses a robotic "gripper" (right) on an x-y stage to move buttons containing optical fibers to appropriate locations in a thirty arc minute field (left). Roughly 100 fibers can be deployed at the same time. Each of these fibers then feeds light to a single spectrograph (downstairs), allowing data to be recorded from 100 objects at once.

You can also see a close-up of the gripper, and a separate view of the focal plane.

More: instruments page, WIYN instruments page.

Minimum credit line: Phil Massey, Lowell Obs./NOAO/AURA/NSF

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