Construction of the 'Two-degree Field' (2dF) instrument on the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) is now virtually complete and commissioning is well underway. The key components are described. Several recent milestones are reported, including the first scientific results. Future prospects and plans are discussed.
An updated project status review of the Japan 8m telescope, Subaru, scheduled for its first light in the second quater of 1998 atop Mauna Kea is given.
An outline is given of our development of mosaic CCD cameras. Hardware and data reduction software of two operational cameras are described. Scientific objectives of wide-field imaging with the cameras are briefly described.
We have constructed a near-infrared imaging camera which is attached to the prime focus of 105cm Schmidt telescope at Kiso Observatory. The camera is equipped with a 1040×1040 PtSi CSD array developed by Mitsubishi Electric Co. The combination of Kiso Schmidt and the array gives a wide field of view of 18.4'×18.4' with a reasonable spatial resolution of 1.06' /pixel. The system performances of the camera have been evaluated through laboratory and observational tests. Low noise, good cosmetics(no defect pixels), and good stability of the camera system show an excellent performance for astronomical use.
A new CCD camera equipped with a large format chip is now under construction for the Kiso 105-cm Schmidt telescope. We use SITe TK2048E, of which pixel size is 24 μm and chip size is 48 mm square. TK2048E is thinned back-illuminated so that it has high sensitivity in U-band. The chip is cooled by a refrigerator instead of liquid nitrogen. MESSIA III is used as CCD control system.
A wide-field CCD detector for solar eclipse observations is discussed. The CCD is supposed to be of a moderate size, and the image of the corona is obtained by scanning the field of view. Results of the 1995 solar eclipse observation are shown which have been made with a prototype of the scanning CCD detector.
The principles to attain improved accuracy in a new controller for large CCD and mosaics detectors with the application of 16- and 32-bit DSP are presented.
The CCDs are widely used in astronomical observations either in direct imaging use or spectroscopic mode. However, the areas of available sensors are too small for large imaging format. One possibility to obtain large detection area is to assemble mosaics of CCD, and drive them simultaneously. Parallel driving of many CCDs together rules out the possibility of individual tuning; however, such optimisation is very important, when the ultimate low light level performance is required, particularly for new, or mixed devices. In this work, a new concept is explored for an entirely novel approach, where the drive waveforms are multiplexed and interleaved. This simultaneously reduces the number of leadout connections and permits individual optimisation efficiently. The digital controller can be designed within a single EPLD (Erasable Programmable Logic Device) chip produced by a CAD software package, where most of the digital controller circuits are integrated. This method can minimise the component. count., and improve the system efficiency greatly, based on earlier works by Han et a1. (1996, 1994). The system software has an open architecture to permit convenient modification by the user, to fit their specific purposes. Some variable system control parameters can be selected by a user with a wider range of choice. The digital controller design concept allows great flexibility of system parameters by the software, specifically for the compatibility to deal with any number of mixed CCDs, and in any format, within the practical limit.
We have developed and tested a CCD camera (100 × 100 pixels) system for observing Ha images of the solar flares with time resolution> 25 msec. The 512 × 512 pixels image of CCD camera at 2 Mpixels/sec can be recorded at the rate of more than 5 frame/sec while 100 × 100 pixels area image can be obtained 40 frames/sec. The 100 × 100 pixels image of CCD camera corresponds to 130 × 130 arc - sec2 of the solar disk.
We developed a telescope control system called ASTROS for the VST1 and VST2, which are specially designed radio telescopes to make a survey and have a 60-cm main dish. ASTROS is designed on the distributed intelligence concept and structurized programming. The hardware of the system is composed of several intelligent devices connected with de facto standard interfaces and main control unit is PC. The program is coded in the C language and its structure is object oriented in order to make easy to replace the component devices. ASTROS is now running on two twin telescopes, VST1 and VST2. VST1 is installed at Nobeyama in Japan and VST2 is installed at La Silla in Chile. They are making a galactic plane survey in CO (J=2-1) with 9 arcmin beam semi-automatically.
Large field spectrographs are severely influenced by atmospheric refraction. LAMOST is a large field multi-object spectroscopy telescope with 5° field of view, f/5 focus ratio and 20m focal length. There will be 4000 fibers simultaneous on it's ∮1.75m focal plane. Here we discuss the atmospheric refraction effects on LAMOST in two hands. One is the effect of differential refraction across the field, another is the effect of atmospheric dispersion. According to the calculation, we find that: 1. The largest deviation from center within the field is 4.32" during a 1.5-hour integration at 80° declination. 2. The directions of deviation are complex, so the deviations can't be decreased by rotating the field. We also give out the atmospheric dispersions.
LAMOST is a special reflecting Schmidt telescope. Both the refleting Schmidt plate MA and the spherical primary mitrror MB are segmened mirrors. These two cofocus but not co-phase. The diffraction of the optical system is decided by the shape overlapping of MA and MB. This paper describes the diffraction caculating results with different declination and different field angle. The diffraction influence to the image quality is acceptable in the error buget of optical system. It also proves that the size seletion of the sub-mirror is reasonable.
This paper describes a plan of a new IR phace-shfting interferometric system for testing astronomical aspheric mirror which has big departure from the best fit reference sphere during fine grinding. In this experimental system, some new technology will be adopted. The accuracy of system can reach ⋋/40(⋋=10.6 μm)