The role of FLAIR: a major new UKST survey

A major Franco-Australian collaboration has proposed to use FLAIR, the multi-object fibre spectroscopy system on the UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST) for spectroscopic follow-up of DENIS galaxies. Such a redshift survey of galaxies presents a major observational challenge. Systems like 2dF on the AAT are inappropriate due to the poor match between fibre density on the sky (100 per sq.deg) and DENIS galaxies ( per sq.deg). Single-object spectroscopy is also incapable of making significant in-roads on competitive time-scales. However the proposed survey is much better matched to FLAIR's fibre density and field of view. The B-band DENIS limit would be (for typical galaxy B-J colours) which is well within FLAIR's capabilities. The commissioning of a thinned CCD has led to impressive performance gains such that a single FLAIR-DENIS field could be observed in 2 hours (Parker 1996, Spectrum,10,20). It is anticipated that 20% of the sky can be covered per annum using 35% of the time on the UKST. This assumes two FLAIR-DENIS fields per night for the 10 dark nights per lunation (4 hours per night) and one field for the 10 grey nights per lunation (1.5-2 hours per night) and two-thirds clear weather. Although the survey could proceed with the existing semi-manual fibre positioning, it is labour-intensive, messy and time consuming. Major FLAIR upgrades to give more fibres and automatic fibre-positioning would substantially improve the efficiency of the survey, perhaps by a factor of 4. A major push for a more automatic system is underway. Various options are being studied, though a fully automated, off-telescope, pick-place fibre positioning system is the ideal solution.

By the anticipated 1998/99 start date for the FLAIR-DENIS survey, all the major photographic surveys (ER, EJ, SES, I) undertaken at the UKST should be complete. Very considerable amounts of FLAIR time may become available for the FLAIR-DENIS survey, which would constitute a new UKST survey, going on the telescope whenever the conditions are too poor for photography, as well a getting other substantial tranches of allocated time.

© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997