First Optical Observations with Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors

Details First Optical Observations with Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors First Optical Observations with Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors

Jan 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21941306m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #413.06

Physics

Optics

Scientific paper

In July 2011 the ARray Camera for Optical to Near-IR Spectrophotometry (ARCONS) was successfully deployed at the Palomar 200” Hale telescope for its first-light run. This photon counting integral field unit (IFU) is the first instrument to utilize Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) for optical to near-IR astronomy. MKIDs are an emerging low temperature detector (LTD) technology with potential applications from sub-millimeter to X-ray astronomy. ARCONS houses a 1024 (32x32) pixel MKID array, making ARCONS not only the first optical/near-IR MKID camera, but the largest non-dispersive optical/near-IR spectrophotometer by a factor of 10. The camera has a spectral resolution of R 12 at 400 nm, and is capable of time-tagging individual photons with microsecond resolution. Its operational bandwidth is 400 to 1100 nm, which is limited mostly by the optics necessary to reduce sky counts in the near-IR. ARCONS was deployed at Palomar's Coudé focus with a field of view of 7.5"x7.5” (.23"x.23” per pixel). In this talk I will discuss the performance of the instrument through observations of photometric standard stars and other calibration sources. Early science results will also be shown, including observations of the Crab Pulsar and Einstein's cross. Having proven the viability of MKID technology in the optical to near-IR regime, we can now build on its potential to image fainter and more challenging targets such as millisecond pulsars.

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