Instrumention Plan for FY 1997

The Instrument Projects Advisory Group met in October to set priorities for the current fiscal year. The program may be characterized as completing the commissioning of major new instruments and upgrades, while starting in earnest on work for Gemini and a new instrument for CTIO.

The three instruments in commissioning are Phoenix, the CCD Mosaic Imager, and COB upgraded to a 512 InSb array. Phoenix will receive a boost to its current reconfiguration speed and a more user friendly version of the interface software. Each outing of the CCD Mosaic Imager for test and engineering finds its hardware and software more robust. Please see the article in this Newsletter for further details. Efforts associated with the Mosaic this year will include characterization of scientific grade 2K X 4K SITe CCDs for replacement of the eight current engineering grade detectors. At this writing, the COB upgrade is nearly completed, and it will soon be shipped to CTIO.

Work for Gemini will occupy much of the Instrument Project Group's attention for the coming year. The first instrument required for commissioning the first Gemini telescope is the Near-Infrared Imager (NIRI) under development at the University of Hawaii. NOAO is producing an upgraded version of the WILDFIRE controller that relies on the digital signal processor produced by Datacube. That system will be delivered to Hawaii for integration into NIRI. The design will serve as the basis for controlling the arrays in the other near-infrared instruments that will be used on Gemini, some of which will be provided by and shared with NOAO, such as COB and Phoenix. The Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph team faces a year of concerted design effort. They successfully passed the Preliminary Design Review in October, and will be working up the detailed designs for Critical Design Review a year after the PDR. The Infrared R&D lab will be working with the US Gemini Program in procuring and characterizing ALADDIN-type 1024 InSb arrays for use in Gemini instruments.

The major new O/UV instrument is a version of the Hydra multi-fiber positioner that will work at the R-C focus of the CTIO Blanco Telescope. This capability has been the highest priority of the Users Committee and is first in the O/UV queue after completion of the CCD Mosaic Imager. A significant part of the effort is the production of a wide-field corrector, including atmospheric dispersion compensation. Delivery and integration of the system at CTIO is planned for FY 1998. We will discuss with the Users Committee in December the desirability of producing a clone to the CCD Mosaic Imager as soon as possible, to optimize the wide-field imaging in both hemispheres. We also expect progress on the upgrade to the GoldCam spectrograph optics for the Kitt Peak 2.1-m.

Several projects are in the design or exploration phases. They include an adaptive optics system for the WIYN telescope, a high-throughput optical spectrograph based on new grating technology, and a collaborative effort with the Ohio State University to produce a new infrared capability for Kitt Peak.

The Instrument Projects Group and their colleagues at CTIO obviously do not get to rest on their laurels. We anticipate that the addition of the CCD Mosaic, Phoenix, and upgraded COB to the complement of NOAO facility instruments will have significant positive impact on user science.

Richard Green for IPAC and IPG