The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph Design (original) (raw)

The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during the second servicing mission, in 1997 February. Four bands cover the wavelength range of 115-1000 nm, with spectral resolving powers between 26 and 200,000. Camera modes are used for target acquisition and deep imaging. Correction for HST's spherical aberration and astigmatism is included. The 115-170 nm range is covered by a CsI MAMA (Multianode Microchannel Array) detector and the 165-310 nm range by a Cs 2 Te MAMA, each with a format of pixels, while the 305-555 and 550-1000 nm ranges are 2048 # 2048 covered by a single CCD with a format of pixels. The multiplexing advantage of using these two-1024 # 1024 dimensional detectors compared with the pixel detectors of the first-generation spectrographs is 1 or 2 1 # 512 orders of magnitude, depending on the mode used. The relationship between the scientific goals and the instrument specifications and design is discussed.