In the ten years since the converted 6.5m MMT was dedicated the observatory has built up an impressive suite of instrumentation to compliment the three interchangeable secondary mirrors. This review paper presents an up-to-date perspective on all the capabilities of our full range of instrumentation, highlighting newly commissioned instruments (the MMT and Magellan InfraRed Spectrograph (MMIRS), an infrared spectrograph) and new modes or upgrades for established instruments (such as; Red Channel, the MMT's workhorse spectrograph, Hectochelle, an optical fiber-fed, multi-object spectrograph and the AO instruments CLIO, a 5 micron camera and BLINC, a mid-infrared camera). The MMT's pioneering adaptive secondary mirror can be used with both natural guide stars (NGS) or with a Rayleigh laser guide star (LGS) system. The LGS has recently demonstrated wide-field partial compensation with ground layer adaptive optics and here we present progress to date. Finally, we report on the start of a project to investigate how the instrument suite has contributed to the science productivity the MMT over the last 10 years.

Date Published: 14 July 2010
PDF: 14 pages
Proc. SPIE 7735, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III, 773507 (14 July 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.857331

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7735:
Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III
Ian S. McLean; Suzanne K. Ramsay; Hideki Takami, Editor(s)