The Dark Energy Spectrometer (DESpec): A Multi-Fiber Spectroscopic Upgrade of the Dark Energy Camera and Survey for the Blanco Telescope

Understand

We describe an initiative to build and use the Dark Energy Spectrometer (DESpec), a wide-field spectroscopic survey instrument for the Blanco 4 meter telescope at Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory (CTIO) in Chile.

• A new system with about 4000 robotically positioned optical fibers will be interchangeable with the CCD imager of the existing Dark Energy Camera (DECam), accessing a field of view of 3.8 square degrees in a single exposure.
• The proposed instrument will be operated by CTIO and available for use by the astronomy community.
• Our collaboration proposes to use DESpec to conduct a wide, deep spectroscopic survey to study Dark Energy.