Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21440915r&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #214, #409.15; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.674
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Flat fielding is necessary to have for calibrating data and traditional methods can sometimes be troublesome. With limited twilight time available for sky flats and difficulties with uniform illumination, clearance space, or with mounting (as with clamshell style domes) for dome flats, consistency between sites will be difficult to obtain. The Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT) is going to have approximately thirty telescopes ranging from 0.4m to 2.0m, and so a reliable and consistent way of taking flat fields needs to be implemented. Lambert is a device that has been designed and currently being tested on the two 2.0m Faulkes Telescope North and South as a way to simplify the flat fielding process.
Lambert has been designed as a 1-D bar of LED lights equal in length to the primary mirror that scans horizontally across the pupil of the telescope. This system has the advantages over traditional dome flats of having a theoretically uniform illumination in the scan direction, minimal sources, ease of deployment, and minimal space requirements. The two 2.0m Lamberts have been deployed and are currently being tested with the 0.4m Lambert and the 1.0m Lambert still in the design phase.
By comparing the Lambert flats to sky flats, LCOGT will hope to show that the two methods of flat fielding are comparable and therefore be able to save calibration time during the twilight hours by performing Lambert flats during the day. Initial tests show that the Lambert flats and sky flats agree to better than 1% on the 2.0m Lambert and to about 1% on the 0.4m Lambert in spectral ranges where the LEDs have meaningful output.
Haldeman Benjamin J.
Rosing W. E.
Ross Rachel J.
Tufts Joseph R.
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