  Hector will be the new massively-multiplexed integral field spectroscopy
(IFS) instrument for the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in Australia and the
next main dark-time instrument for the observatory. Based on the success of the
SAMI instrument, which is undertaking a 3400-galaxy survey, the integral field
unit (IFU) imaging fibre bundle (hexabundle) technology under-pinning SAMI is
being improved to a new innovative design for Hector. The distribution of
hexabundle angular sizes is matched to the galaxy survey properties in order to
image 90% of galaxies out to 2 effective radii. 50-100 of these IFU imaging
bundles will be positioned by 'starbug' robots across a new 3-degree field
corrector top end to be purpose-built for the AAT. Many thousand fibres will
then be fed into new replicable spectrographs. Fundamentally new science will
be achieved compared to existing instruments due to Hector's wider field of
view (3 degrees), high positioning efficiency using starbugs, higher
spectroscopic resolution (R~3000-5500 from 3727-7761A, with a possible redder
extension later) and large IFUs (up to 30 arcsec diameter with 61-217 fibre
cores). A 100,000 galaxy IFS survey with Hector will decrypt how the accretion
and merger history and large-scale environment made every galaxy different in
its morphology and star formation history. The high resolution, particularly in
the blue, will make Hector the only instrument to be able to measure
higher-order kinematics for galaxies down to much lower velocity dispersion
than in current large IFS galaxy surveys, opening up a wealth of new nearby
galaxy science.
