Subaru Telescope

Subaru Telescope is an 8.2-meter reflector telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The telescope is located in Hawaii on Mauna Kea. It began operation in 1998, having the world's largest monolithic mirror until surpassed in 2005. Instruments:

• AO188 - 188-element adaptive optics system.
• FOCAS - Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph.
• HDS - High Dispersion Spectrograph.
• HSC - Hyper Suprime-Cam: replaced Suprime-Cam in 2017 with an enhanced imaging camera with 870 million pixels and a 1.5° field of view.
• IRCS - Infrared Camera and Spectrograph.
• MOIRCS - Multi-object Infrared Camera and spectrograph.
• CHARIS - Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph.
• FastPDI - Polarization differential imaging.
• IRD - Infrared Doppler (spectrometer for RV-method exoplanet discovery and observation).
• MEC - MKID Exoplanet Camera. (currently unavailable)
• REACH - Rigorous Exoplanetary Atmosphere Characterization and High Dispersion Coronagraphy.
• SCExAO - Subaru Coronagraph with extreme adaptive optics: includes speckle suppression, aiming to be able to image extra-solar planets.
• VAMPIRES - Visible Aperture-masking Polarimetric Imager for Resolved Exoplanetary Structures.
• PFS (for Prime Focus Spectrograph).

Some decommissioned instruments:

• AO36 - 36-element AO system.
• CIAO - Coronagraphic Imager.
• COMICS - Cooled Mid Infrared Camera and Spectrograph.
• HiCIAO - High-contrasts Coronagraphic Imager and Adaptive Optics.
• OHS/CISCO - OH-Airglow Suppressor/Cooled Infrared Spectrograph and Camera for OHS
• Kyoto3DII - Kyoto tridimensional spectrograph II.
• FMOS - Fiber Multi-object Spectrograph.
• Suprime-Cam - decommissioned in 2017, replaced by HSC.
• SWIMS - Simultaneous-color Wide-field Infrared Multi-object Spectrograph.

PFS, which has been in development for years, is installed on the telescope and began scientific observation in 2025, while continuing to undergo initial adjustment. It is designed for galaxy surveys for cosmology research. It collects visible light and near infrared using 2400 optical fibers to simultaneously observe multiple targets. It has three arms, each covering a different band, which image the same slit plane simultaneously.

In development is AO3K, a more advanced AO system, and ULTIMATE-Subaru, a project for yet another future, more-advanced AO system.

Among the surveys carried out on the Subaru Telescope is HSC-SSP (Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program).