Previous Article
Next Article
Table of Contents

The IRS Goes Into Retirement (1Sep92)
(from KPNO, NOAO Newsletter No. 31, 1 September 1992)

As announced in this Newsletter a year ago (No. 27, p. 32), the
Intensified Reticon Scanner (IRS) has gone into retirement. After
serving the needs of spectroscopy at the 0.9-m telescope for nearly
thirteen years, the instrument has been surpassed by advancing CCD
technology. Its final nights on the telescope were a bit taxing for
everyone concerned, and they demonstrated the difficulties of
maintaining aging instruments. The runs were marred by cooling system
difficulties and intermittencies in the control electronics.

Observers wishing to do spectroscopy at the 0.9-m should now request
"WhiteCam," a combination of the GoldCam CCD dewar attached to the
White Spectrograph. (See the article in the last issue of the
Newsletter.) The current chip in the Gold Camera dewar is a
Ford 3 K x 1 K with 15 um pixels.  Prospective observers should request
the Gold Camera Instrument Manual and the White Spectrograph Supplement
for technical information.

There are some restrictions at the 0.9-m with this instrument. WhiteCam
works with a fixed north-south slit. The longest slit available with
the current decker is 8.4 arcmin with a scale of 1.8 arcsec/pixel on
the chip.

David De Young

Previous Article
Next Article
Table of Contents