KWFC: four square degrees camera for the Kiso Schmidt Telescope

Shigeyuki Sako; Tsutomu Aoki; Mamoru Doi; Nobuyuki Ienaka; Naoto Kobayashi; Noriyuki Matsunaga; Hiroyuki Mito; Takashi Miyata; Tomoki Morokuma; Yoshikazu Nakada; Takao Soyano; Ken'ichi Tarusawa; Satoshi Miyazaki; Fumiaki Nakata; Norio Okada; Yuki Sarugaku; Michael W. Richmond

doi:10.1117/12.925765

24 September 2012 KWFC: four square degrees camera for the Kiso Schmidt Telescope

Shigeyuki Sako, Tsutomu Aoki, Mamoru Doi, Nobuyuki Ienaka, Naoto Kobayashi, Noriyuki Matsunaga, Hiroyuki Mito, Takashi Miyata, Tomoki Morokuma, Yoshikazu Nakada, Takao Soyano, Ken'ichi Tarusawa, Satoshi Miyazaki, Fumiaki Nakata, Norio Okada, Yuki Sarugaku, Michael W. Richmond

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8446, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV; 84466L (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.925765
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Abstract

The Kiso Wide Field Camera (KWFC) is a facility instrument for the 105-cm Schmidt telescope being operated by the Kiso Observatory of the University of Tokyo. This camera has been designed for wide-field observations by taking advantage of a large focal-plane area of the Schmidt telescope. Eight CCD chips with a total of 8k x 8k pixels cover a field-of-view of 2.2 degrees x 2.2 degrees on the sky. The dewar window works as a field flattener lens minimizing an image distortion across the field of view. Two shutter plates moving in parallel achieve uniform exposures on all the CCD pixels. The KWFC is equipped with a filter exchanger composed of an industrial robotic arm, a filter magazine capable of storing 12 filters, and a filter holder at the focal plane. Both the arm and the magazine are installed inside the tube framework of the telescope but without vignetting the beam. Wide-field survey programs searching for supernovae and late-type variable stars have begun in April 2012. The survey observations are performed with a management software system for facility instruments including the telescope and the KWFC. This system automatically carries out observations based on target lists registered in advance and makes appropriate decisions for implementation of observations by referring to weather conditions and status of the instruments. Image data obtained in the surveys are processed with pipeline software in real time to search for candidates of time-variable sources.

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Shigeyuki Sako, Tsutomu Aoki, Mamoru Doi, Nobuyuki Ienaka, Naoto Kobayashi, Noriyuki Matsunaga, Hiroyuki Mito, Takashi Miyata, Tomoki Morokuma, Yoshikazu Nakada, Takao Soyano, Ken'ichi Tarusawa, Satoshi Miyazaki, Fumiaki Nakata, Norio Okada, Yuki Sarugaku, and Michael W. Richmond "KWFC: four square degrees camera for the Kiso Schmidt Telescope", Proc. SPIE 8446, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV, 84466L (24 September 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.925765

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