Design status of WFCAM: a wide-field camera for the UK Infrared Telescope

David M. Henry; Mark M. Casali; David Montgomery; Keith Burch; Ken Laidlaw; Derek J. Ives; Andrew J. A. Vick; Alan Bridger; David Lunney; Andrew J. Adamson; Nicholas P. Rees; Tomas Chylek; Timothy C. Chuter

doi:10.1117/12.457204

7 March 2003 Design status of WFCAM: a wide field camera for the UK infrared telescope

David M. Henry, Mark M. Casali, David Montgomery, Keith Burch, Ken Laidlaw, Derek J. Ives, Andrew J. A. Vick, Alan Bridger, David Lunney, Andrew J. Adamson, Nicholas P. Rees, Tomas Chylek, Timothy C. Chuter

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 4841, Instrument Design and Performance for Optical/Infrared Ground-based Telescopes; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.457204
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 2002, Waikoloa, Hawai'i, United States

Abstract

An update on the design status of the UKIRT Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) is presented. WFCAM is a wide field infrared camera for the UK Infrared Telescope, designed to produce large scale infrared surveys. The complete system consists of a new IR camera with integral autoguider and a new tip/tilt secondary mirror unit. WFCAM is being designed and built by a team at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, supported by the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hawaii. The camera uses a novel quasi-Schmidt camera type design, with the camera mounted above the UKIRT primary mirror. The optical system operates over 0.7 - 2.4 μm and has a large corrected field of view of 0.9° diameter. The focal plane is sparsely populated with 4 2K x 2K Rockwell HAWAII-2 MCT array detectors, giving a pixel scale of 0.4 arcsec/pixel. A separate autoguider CCD is integrated into the focal plane unit. Parallel detector controllers are used, one for each of the four IR arrays and a fifth for the autoguider CCD.

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David M. Henry, Mark M. Casali, David Montgomery, Keith Burch, Ken Laidlaw, Derek J. Ives, Andrew J. A. Vick, Alan Bridger, David Lunney, Andrew J. Adamson, Nicholas P. Rees, Tomas Chylek, and Timothy C. Chuter "Design status of WFCAM: a wide field camera for the UK infrared telescope", Proc. SPIE 4841, Instrument Design and Performance for Optical/Infrared Ground-based Telescopes, (7 March 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.457204

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