A Prime Focus CCD Imaging System for McDonald Observatory's 76--cm Telescope

Details A Prime Focus CCD Imaging System for McDonald Observatory's 76--cm Telescope A Prime Focus CCD Imaging System for McDonald Observatory's 76--cm Telescope

Dec 1992

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992aas...18110107c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, 181st AAS Meeting, #101.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 24, p.1282

Computer Science

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Scientific paper

We have designed, built and are now placing into service a prime focus F/3 CCD imaging system for the McDonald Observatory 76--cm Cassegrain telescope. We have replaced the Cassegrain secondary assembly with a mechanical structure housing a field corrector and CCD dewar. The corrector is a down looking 5 element catadioptric design consisting of 2 reflective and 3 refractive elements. The corrector's optical performance is nearly diffraction limited ( ~ 0.3 arcseconds) over a 1.1(deg) field, and images all light from a point source over 300--1000 Angstroms within a 0.5 arcsecond circle onto a single flat focal plane. In addition the corrector has very low distortion; its magnification varying by <0.01% from the center to the edge of the full field. The dewar contains a Loral Fairchild 2048times2048 CCD with which we can image a >46times46 arcminute field with 1.35 arcsecond resolution. We plan to replace in the near future the 2048times2048 CCD with a Loral Fairchild 4096times4096 CCD which will image the same size field but at 0.68 arcsecond resolution. We have constructed this instrument principly for the purpose of conducting a deep multi-color, UBVI MgH( ~ 5200 Angstroms) CaH( ~ 6830 Angstroms), survey in search of cool degenerate stars. We present initial optical tests, imagery and discuss the effectiveness of this instrument to conduct our survey as well as other projects needing wide field imaging. This work was supported in part by NSF Grant AST--9020707.

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