The on-chip guiding system of the wide-field infrared camera at CFHT

Loic Albert; Martin Riopel; Douglas Teeple; Jeff Ward; Greg Barrick

doi:10.1117/12.617533

7 September 2005 The on-chip guiding system of the wide-field infrared camera at CFHT

Loic Albert, Martin Riopel, Douglas Teeple, Jeff Ward, Greg Barrick

Proceedings Volume 5881, Infrared and Photoelectronic Imagers and Detector Devices; 58810A (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.617533
Event: Optics and Photonics 2005, 2005, San Diego, California, 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 subsample of each array is continuously read at a rate of 50 Hz while the integration of the science image is ongoing with the full arrays. 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. The guide window size and readout rate are adjustable but typical numbers are 8×8-16×16 boxes read at 50 or 1.5 Hz. This paper presents the technical architecture of the guiding system and performance measurements on the sky with WIRCam.

Citation Download Citation

Loic Albert, Martin Riopel, Douglas Teeple, Jeff Ward, and Greg Barrick "The on-chip guiding system of the wide-field infrared camera at CFHT", Proc. SPIE 5881, Infrared and Photoelectronic Imagers and Detector Devices, 58810A (7 September 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.617533

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