Stylized view of the Thirty Meter Telescope with the telescope tube structure suppressed to highlight instruments. You can see WFOS on the right, and NFIRAOS on the left. NFIRAOS feeds MODHIS and IRIS. Note there is plenty of space on the Nasmyth platforms for future instruments.
Narrow Field InfraRed Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS)Infrared Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) Multi-Objective Diffraction limited High Dispersion Spectrograph (MODHIS) Wide - Field Optical Spectrograph (WFOS)
Equipped with the two deformable mirrors and six laser guide stars, TMT’s facility multi-conjugate adaptive optics system will provide a uniform, high Strehl (50% in H-band) correction across a two arcminute field view with high sky coverage. NFIRAOS will enable the measurement of the position of faint stars with 15 microarcsecond accuracy, that's the resolution of a quarter placed on the moon as observed from Earth. NFIRAOS feeds three instruments with IRIS and MODHIS being the first two.
Currrent Status: Production Readiness/Fabrication
TMT's NFIRAOS will provide images over 12 times sharper than Hubble space telescope (and 4.5 times sharper than JWST). Shown here is a the nucleus of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31 through HST and a simulated version of the same area via TMT's IRIS fed by NFIRAOS. This level of detail will allow us to explore the dynamics of the stars at the center of Andromeda, learning more about the central supermassive black hole there, comparing it to ours in the center of the Milky Way. Image Credit: Tuan Do. Hubble Space Telescope image courtesy of NASA/ESA/Hubble
An image of NFIRAOS and IRIS
Overview
Observation Modes
Performance
Laser Guide Star Facility
Team Members
Fed by NFIRAOS, TMT's advanced multi-conjugate adaptive optics system, IRIS contains a near-infared imager with a half arcminute field of veiw and an integral field spectrograph. IRIS will simutaneously capture images and spectra of faint targets. IRIS will observe stars, galaxies, and planetary syatems, and is capable of resolving the motion of stars around black holes in the center of nearby galaxies.
Current Status: Final Design Phase
IRIS on TMT will allow us to explore volcanism on other objects in the solar system. Simulated comparison of imaging of Jupiter’s moon Io, by the W.M. Keck Observatory and TMT IRIS instrument. Image Credit: Tuan Do (University of California Los Angeles), the TMT InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph collaboration, and TMT International Observatory, LLC.
MODHIS will deliver high resolution spectra and precision radial velocities in the near infrared aided by the adaptive optics correction of NFIRAOS. With its high sensitivity and precision, MODHIS will explore exoplanetary atmospheres and stellar dynamics, seeking life signatures like oxygen and methane around distant worlds.
Current Status: Conceptual Design Phase
TMT's MODHIS will be able to detect and characterize rocky Earths and Super Earths orbiting the habitable zones of dwarf stars that are within 25 pc of Earth. Image credit: NASA
MODHIS front-end instrument is mounted in blue at the top of NFIRAOS with the grey box on the left contains the MODHIS spectrograph
WFOS will capture images and spectra across a large field of view, from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths. WFOS’s ability to obtain spectra for up to 96 targets simultaneously makes it ideal for studying everything from objects in our solar system to distant galaxies. With its powerful multi-object spectroscopy, WFOS will allow astronomers to survey large regions of the sky efficiently, providing insights into galaxy formation, evolution, and the nature of dark matter.
Current Status: Preliminary Design Phase
WFOS will have the sensitivity and the multi-object capability to use numerous faint galaxies as background sources to build an accurate map of the 3D intergalactic medium. This will help us understand how galaxies and the universe itself evolved.
The entire TMT observatory has been designed to support a wide range of different forms of facility class instrumentation. To do this, a suite of instrument concepts was developed and the observatory design was developed around them. These longstanding ideas for instruments have continued to evolve. Several instrument concepts are being actively developed and are evolving beyond the original ideas: MICHI a mid-infrared spectrometer, IRMOS a multiple IFU infrared spectrometer, HROS a high resolution optical spectrometer, and PSI a high contrast planetary finder and characterizer.
