Infrared guiding with faint stars with the wide-field infrared camera at CFHT

Douglas Teeple; Martin Riopel; Marc Baril; Gregory Barrick; Loic Albert; Tom Vermeulen; Jeff Ward

doi:10.1117/12.670355

Translator Disclaimer

27 June 2006 Infrared guiding with faint stars with the wide-field infrared camera at CFHT

Douglas Teeple, Martin Riopel, Marc Baril, Gregory Barrick, Loic Albert, Tom Vermeulen, Jeff Ward

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6274, Advanced Software and Control for Astronomy; 62740I (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.670355
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2006, Orlando, Florida , United States

Abstract

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) is commissioning a new Wide field Infrared Camera (WIRCam) that uses a mosaic of 4 HAWAII-2RG near- infrared detectors manufactured by Rockwell. At the heart of the instrument is an On-Chip Guiding System (OCGS) that exploits the unique parallel science/guide frame readout capability of the HAWAII-2RG detectors. A small sub sample of each array is continuously read at a rate of up to 50 Hz while the integration of the science image is ongoing with the full arrays (read at a maximal rate of 1.4 s per full frame). Each of these guiding windows is centered on a star to provide an error signal for the telescope guiding. An Image Stabilizer Unit (ISU) (i.e. a tip-tilt silica plate), provides the corrections. A Proportional Integral Differential (PID) closed loop controls the ISU such that telescope tracking is corrected at a rate of 5 Hz. This paper presents the technical architecture of the guiding system and performance measurements on the sky in engineering runs with WIRCam with faint stars up to magnitude 14.

Citation Download Citation

Douglas Teeple, Martin Riopel, Marc Baril, Gregory Barrick, Loic Albert, Tom Vermeulen, and Jeff Ward "Infrared guiding with faint stars with the wide-field infrared camera at CFHT", Proc. SPIE 6274, Advanced Software and Control for Astronomy, 62740I (27 June 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.670355

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE