RSAA News of the Month: September 2003
A Win for NIFS
RSAA-designed instrument wins major engineering award
The Near-Infrared Integral-Field Spectrograph
(NIFS) designed by the astronomers and engineers of the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA) has
been awarded the ACT Government New Technology and Innovation Award
for 2003. The award, "in recognition of distinction in
engineering achievement", was presented by the Canberra
Division of Engineers
Australia at their Awards night on Sept 4th. NIFS also recieved a
"Highly Commended" certificate in the Engineering Excellence
category.
Left: NIFS Project Manager, Jan van Harmelen, and
RSAA Director, Prof Penny Sackett,
display the 2003 Innovation
and New Technology Award to RSAA staff.
Right:
The two award certificates ready for hanging.
NIFS is destined for the 8m Gemini North telescope in
Hawaii. It is a new design of spectrograph which, combined with the
Gemini adaptive optics system, will allow astronomers to obtain near
infra-red spectra of a quality matching those obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. NIFS was
designed and constructed by a dedicated team of specialist engineers
at the RSAA. This team of specialist engineers comprises
opto-mechanical engineers, electronics engineers, software engineers
and systems engineers, who work in concert with instrument scientists.
NIFS photographed on Jan 21, 2003.
The cleanroom and its equipment have been burnt out.
Part of the roof has collapsed onto NIFS.
The outer casing has been burnt through and
later examination confirmed that internal components
had been destroyed beyond repair.
At the time of the January firestorm, construction had been almost
completed and the instrument was in the final stages of testing. The
instrument was destroyed beyond repair, but the design drawings and
some components were off-site and safe. NIFS is now being rebuilt in
record time by the RSAA team in combination with our strategic
industry partner Auspace
Ltd.
Left:
The NIFS team at the successful conclusion of vital
testing in May 2002.
Right: The NIFS team receiving the awards at
RSAA, Sept 2003.
Despite the setback caused by the fires, NIFS is still on track to be
one of the quickest of all Gemini instrument deliveries. NIFS will add
lustre to Australia’s long and proud history at the cutting edge
of instrumentation for international astronomy.
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