Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) Project Office Now Open for Business (May 14, 2014)

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) project, formerly know as the “Next Generation CFHT”, has opened a Project Office at CFHT’s headquarters in Waimea, Hawaii, with the goal of generating a Construction Proposal over the next three years.

The Project Office is the culmination of over five years of design and feasibility studies that have demonstrated the opportunity to achieve compelling and dramatic science through upgrading CFHT into an advanced, modern and unique facility. MSE, a 10 m dedicated wide field spectroscopic telescope, will be capable of observing up to ~3200 separate objects simultaneously at spectral resolutions ranging from ~2000 – 20,000, within a ~1.5 square degrees field of view. By leveraging the exceptional image quality of the CFHT site, MSE will yield stunning new research capabilities to tackle problems ranging from dark matter, dark energy and cosmology, to galaxy evolution and structure, the archaeology of the Milky Way, stars and stellar systems, and exoplanets. Intended to support both individual programs and large scale surveys of unprecedented scale, MSE will complement the other Maunakea observatories as well as those planned for deployment worldwide and in space.

Contact Information:

  • CFHT Executive Director, Doug Simons (simons@cfht.hawaii.edu)
  • MSE Project Manager, Rick Murowinski (murowinski@mse.cfht.hawaii.edu)
  • MSE Project Scientist Alan McConnachie (mcconnachie@mse.cfht.hawaii.edu).

Additional Information:

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