Peter J. McGregor , Michael Dopita , Peter Wood , Michael G. Burton, PASA, 18 (1), in press.
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Title/Abstract Page: Science with NIFS, Australia's
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Introduction
The Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA) of the Australian National University (ANU) has successfully completed the Conceptual Design Review of the Gemini Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS1) and is about to sign a contract with the International Gemini Project Office (IGPO) for the further design, construction, and commissioning of the instrument. A preliminary design for NIFS was described by McGregor et al. (1999). NIFS will perform near diffraction-limited, near-infrared, imaging spectroscopy with the ALTAIR2 facility adaptive optics (AO) system on Gemini North. It will have a
3.0'' x 3.0'' field-of-view and divide this field into 29 slitlets each 0.1'' wide with 0.04'' pixels in the spatial direction. The reformatted slit images will be dispersed with a two-pixel spectral resolving power of 
(
60 km s-1) in each of the J, H, and K photometric pass bands. NIFS is a fast-tracked instrument that will use duplicates of the Near-InfraRed Imager (NIRI3) cryostat, On-Instrument Wavefront Sensor (OIWFS), mechanism and temperature control systems, and EPICS control software. The initial detector will be a
2048 x 2048 HgCdTe HAWAII-2 PACE technology array manufactured by the Rockwell Science Center. The detector system will be developed in collaboration with the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii.
NIFS science is adaptive optics science. Consequently, much of the Gemini core science that has been described in the science case for ALTAIR will be realized using NIFS in combination with ALTAIR. NIFS is a fast-tracked, limited capability spectrograph and so will not reproduce all of the Gemini Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (GNIRS) capabilities. The key features of NIFS are its high spatial resolution integral field unit (IFU) and its moderate spectral resolution in the 1-2.5 
m wavelength range; imaging spectroscopy at the maximum spatial resolution attainable with Gemini will be the primary role of NIFS. The application of this technique to the study of the demographics of massive black holes in nearby galactic nuclei, and the related study of the excitation and dynamics of the inner narrow-line regions of nearby Seyfert galaxies were defined to be NIFS core science (McGregor et al. 1999). NIFS will excel in observations requiring moderate spectral resolution data of spatially complex regions having high surface brightness in either a spatial or a spectral sense; spectroscopy of compact, high surface brightness continuum sources and imaging of extended, narrow emission line regions are examples of these two extremes. These themes feature strongly in the broader science programs described below.
The science capabilities of NIFS cannot be considered in isolation from the requirements imposed by ALTAIR. Consequently, ALTAIR natural guide star requirements are estimated where possible.
Next Section: NIFS Performance
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