2015 April : SPIRou guiding camera tested at CFHT

News

25 April 2015

The SPIRou guiding camera was characterized at ASIAA and tested on the sky at CFHT on April 10.

The SPIRou guiding camera, a key component of SPIRou, will provide views of the selected sky area and, once coupled to a tip-tilt device, will ensure an improved stability of the field of view.  

2015/04 – A portion of the Unicorn constellation as captured by the SPIRou guiding camera, in which the image quality is about 0.6″ ©SPIRou-Team

The SPIRou team at ASIAA (Shiang-Yu Wang, Chi-Hung Yan, Hsin-Yo Chen), in charge of this component selected a commercial Raptor (OWL 640) camera in this purpose;  once purchased, this camera was extensively characterized at ASIAA and in-lab tests confirmed that it matched the specifications for SPIRou (in terms of field of view, sensitivity, read out noise and read out frequency in particular).

The camera was then sent to Hawaii for further on-sky calibration tests by the SPIRou team at CFHT (Greg Barrick, Tom Vermeulen, Claire Moutou).  These tests were successfully carried out on April 10 during the first hours of a clear night with good seeing, and will be used to calibrate the whole guiding channel of SPIRou.

A second camera will be bought by ASIAA and sent to OMP/IRAP to be coupled to the tip/tilt device that the SPIRou OMP/IRAP team is in charge of. 

2015/06 – The SPIRou guiding camera is a commercial Raptor (OWL 640) camera providing the performances required for SPIRou in terms of field of view, sensitivity, read out noise and read out frequency (©SPIRou team)

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