Optical equipment
- ID-nummer
- 2022.020.000
- Titel
- Optical equipment
- Publik beskrivning
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This optical device, an “image slicer” was part of an apparatus that was decisive in Reinhard Genzel’s research on a super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Genzel and his colleagues used a method called Integral field spectroscopy to combine image analysis with spectroscopy. Highly simplified, the experiment deals with capturing light beams, splitting the beams into different wavelengths and then interpreting the data.
The image slicer allows a spectrum to be measured simultaneously for each image pixel. In this way, a “third dimension” becomes accessible. This is why Genzel and his colleagues named their first instrument of this kind a “3D slicer” in the 1990s. This marked the starting point for measuring the velocities with which stars orbit the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Reinhard Genzel donated the optical device to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022. - Pristagare
- Reinhard Genzel
Part of Optical equipment