A general description of the instrument may be found in the Hydra/WIYN Users Manual, available via anonymous FTP. A brief summary of MOS capabilities on WIYN is given here.
| Hydra/Bench Characteristics at WIYN | |
|---|---|
| Full unvignetted field diameter | 60 arcmin |
| Fiber diameters | 3 arcsec (blue fibers) 2 arcsec (red fibers) |
| Fibers available | 96 blue fibers 96 red fibers 12 field orientation probes 84 locations for future fibers |
| Minimum fiber separation | 37 arcsec |
| Configuration time | 20-25 minutes |
| Estimated positioning accuracy | 0.22 arcsec (20 um) |
| Grating | 316 line/mm, blaze angle 7 d (B&L 181) 400 line/mm, blaze angle x d 600 line/mm, blaze angle 13.9 d (B&L 420) 860 line/mm, blaze angle 30.9 d (KPC-24) 1200 line/mm, blaze angle 21.1 d 316 line/mm echelle, blaze angle 63.4 d |
| Cameras | All-refractive bench camera (285 mm focal length) Simmons camera (381 mm focal length) |
| Collimators | 6 inch f/6.7 paraboloid and spheroid |
| Detector | 2048 x 2048 thinned Tektronix CCD (24 um pixels) |
Expected upgrades include a new, faster focal ratio camera and a larger inventory of gratings.
Software is available for developing fiber assignments and defining the spectrograph configuration. A Hydra simulator is also available.