ALFA and 3D: integral field spectroscopy with adaptive optics

2000 
One of the most important techniques for astrophysics with adaptive optics is the ability to do spectroscopy at diffraction limited scales. The extreme difficulty of positioning a faint target accurately on a very narrow slit can be avoided by using an integral field unit, which provides the added benefit of full spatial coverage. During 1998, working with ALFA and the 3D integral field spectrometer, we demonstrated the validity of this technique by extracting and distinguishing spectra from binary stars separated by only 0.26'. The combination of ALFA & 3D is also ideally suited to imaging distant galaxies or the nuclei of nearby ones, as its field of view can be changed between 1.2' X 1.2' and 4' X 4', depending on the pixel scale chosen. In this contribution we present new results both on galactic targets, namely young stellar objects, as well as extra-galactic objects including a Seyfert and a starburst nucleus.© (2000) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
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