NOAO Abstracts for SPIE Meeting in March
What is better than an 8192 x 8192 CCD Mosaic Imager?
Two Mosaic Wide Field Imagers, one for KPNO and one for CTIO
Authors:
Gary P. Muller, Rich Reed, Taft Armandroff, Todd Boroson, George Jacoby
Abstract:
A new generation wide-field imager is being developed and will be put into
service at sites in North and South America. Driven by the requirement
for larger imaging areas and more pixels but limited by manufacturing
process constraints, manufacturers are developing 2, 3, and 4-side
buttable CCDs that can be tiled to achieve large imaging areas as opposed
to developing a single large CCD. NOAO has designed, fabricated, and
tested a wide-field imager called Mosaic that tiles 8 CCDs to
produce an imaging area slightly greater than 123 mm x 123 mm. Several
successful science observation runs have been completed using Mosaic at the
KPNO Mayall 4 m and .9 m telescopes. A second Mosaic Wide-Field Imager
is presently being manufactured and will be deployed at the CTIO Blanco
4 m telescope early next year. This report will focus on the
mechanical design aspects of the Mosaic Imager and the upgrade path to
achieve the scientific requirements will be discussed.
[NOAO at the SPIE Meeting in
March]
National Optical Astronomy Observatories, 950 North Cherry Avenue,
P.O. Box 26732, Tucson, Arizona 85726 Phone: (520) 318-8000
Posted: 03Mar1998