Vista IR Camera: Conceptual Design

Autor: Peter Hastings, Ian Egan, Ken Laidlaw, David Henry, Malcom Stewart, Mark Casali, William J. Sutherland, Eli Atad-Ettedgui, Maureen A. Ellis, Simon C. Craig, John Murray
Rok vydání: 2002
Předmět:
Zdroj: SPIE Proceedings.
ISSN: 0277-786X
DOI: 10.1117/12.458116
Popis: This paper describes the conceptual design for a near infrared camera for the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). VISTA is a 4m class survey telescope that is being designed to perform pre-planned, ground-based astronomical surveys of the Southern sky from ESO's Cerro Paranal Observatory in Chile. The IR Surveys will be carried out in the J, H and Kshort wave-bands at fainter magnitudes than those produced by the current generation of survey telescopes. To maximise throughput and survey efficiency, the camera has been completely integrated with the overall optical design with the telescope mirrors providing the power and the camera optics the wavefront correction. The camera design employs a non-traditional approach to control stray light by using cryogenic baffles rather than the more traditional cold-stop approach. The very large optical field available, 1.6° diameter with a plate scale of approximately 57μm/arcsec, means that the focal plane can accommodate sixteen 2k×2k IR detectors thus forming the largest IR focal plane used in ground based astronomy to date. The 67 Mpixel focal plane will generate a significant data rate. Each exposure will comprise 270 MB and a typical night will generate 400 GB.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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