Oral Presentation

Mapping Our Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies with AMASE

Author(s): Renbin Yan (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Presenter: Renbin Yan (香港中文大學)

Feedback from star formation and supernovae is known to regulate the star formation in galaxies and re-distribute metals in and around galaxies. However, the subgrid physics is still not well understood. AMASE is a planned project to provide unprecedented data for understanding this. AMASE will have a hundred identical fiber-based integral fields spectrographs paired with an array of telephoto lenses to achieve contiguous imaging spectroscopy over 1/4 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. It will be enabled by a significant reduction in the cost of each spectrograph unit. Through massive replication, we can significantly exceed the survey speed of traditional spectrographs under similar total cost. We present the design of the prototype system and the study of its cost effectiveness. The prototype instruments will be deployed in both northern and southern hemispheres, with potential sites in China and South Africa.