HIRDES Print

The HIRDES instrument is the German contribution to the WSO-UV space telescope. Update information on the progress of the instrument development should be accessed through the HIRDES team website.

An industrial Phase B1 study for VUVES and UVES spectrograph has been completed in Germany in May 2006 in collaboration with Russia, while a Phase A/B1 study for a modified LSS with better spatial and spectral resolution is ongoing in China. An Exposure Time calculator is available at AAT.  

  1. HIRDES outline:
  2. HIRDES compared with HST spectrographs:
  3. More information on HIRDES:

 

1. HIRDES outline

HIRDES characteristics will make possible to perform detailed spectral analysis of UV stellar spectra (up to 15-17mag) including e.g. bright stars in Magellanic Clouds.
spectrographs

Spectrograph

Wavelenght range

Resolution
VUVES 1020-1720 A
 55.000
UVES 1740-3100 A
 50.000

 

2. HIRDES versus HST Spectrographs 

The spectral resolution provided by HIRDES (UVES & VUVES) is similar to that provided by HST-STIS, but higher than that provided by HST-COS. As far as sensitivity is concerned, WSO-UV-HIRDES is comparable to HST-COS and definitely better than HST-STIS. Accounting also for the fact that WSO-UV will be a dedicated UV telescope and will have a high efficiency of observations from its high altitude orbit. In fact, WSO-UV will provide a net increase in UV spectra productivity of a factor about 40-50 compared to HST/STIS at the same spectral resolution. 

The general performance of the instrument compared with similar HST instrumentation is shown below:  


HIRDES VUVES & UVES effective area (red line) compared with the effective area of UV spectrographs HST-STIS (comparable spectral resolution) and HST-COS (R~20,000). In the VUVES wavelength range HST-COS has an effective area about 4 times the VUVES one.

3. More information on HIRDES

  • Kappelmann N., Barnstedt J., Gringel W. et al., 2006, "HIRDES UV Spectrographs", Proc. SPIE, Volume 6266, p.25
  • HIRDES Spectrographs, Phase B1 Study (presentation by Norbert Kappelmann, Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany)
  • HIRDES Phase 1 Final Presentation @ DLR, Bonn (R. Graue; D. Kampf; Ch. Neumann, Kayser Threde)
  • Jena-Optronik, HIRDES-FR-DJO-001, HIRDES Phase A Study Final report, May 2001.
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