ACAM: a new imager/spectrograph for the William Herschel Telescope

Chris Benn; Kevin Dee; Tibor Agócs

doi:10.1117/12.788694

9 July 2008 ACAM: a new imager/spectrograph for the William Herschel Telescope

Chris Benn, Kevin Dee, Tibor Agócs

Proceedings Volume 7014, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II; 70146X (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788694
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2008, Marseille, France

Abstract

ACAM will be mounted permanently at a folded-Cassegrain focus of the WHT. It can be used for broad-band or narrow-band optical imaging of an 8.3-arcmin field, or for low-resolution (R ~ 500) spectroscopy. As the only wide-field optical imager at the Cassegrain focus, ACAM is designed to cater for a broad range of science programmes, including those requiring rapid response (e.g. gamma-ray bursts, supernovae) or scheduling at awkward intervals (e.g. successive exoplanet transits), and those requiring the use of many filters (e.g. H_α mapping of low-redshift galaxies). The imaging requirements alone are demanding, requiring a trade-off between field of view (> 8 arcmin), PSF (<< seeing), wavelength coverage (UV to near-IR), throughput (> 0.8) and radius-dependent wavelength shift (< 0.5 nm, for narrow-band filters). We discuss how the trade-off was effected and present the final optical and mechanical design, and the expected performance.

Citation Download Citation

Chris Benn, Kevin Dee, and Tibor Agócs "ACAM: a new imager/spectrograph for the William Herschel Telescope", Proc. SPIE 7014, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II, 70146X (9 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788694

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