WIRCam

WIRCam is the near infrared wide-field imager of CFHT and has been in operation since November 2005. It represents one of the largest astronomical mosaic of infrared detectors ever built and is using on-chip guiding.

WIRCam contains 4 2048 x 2048 pixel HAWAII2-RG detectors, and covers a 20 arcminute x 20 arcminute field-of-view with a sampling of 0.3 arcsecond per pixel. To properly sample the 0.4 arcsecond infrared seeing often offered by the CFHT at Mauna Kea, WIRCam can use its image stabilization unit to micro-step the image with 0.15 arcsecond sampling. The image stabilisation signal is obtained by repeatedly reading out a small region of the detectors centered on a bright star, while the exposure continues for the rest of the pixels. Microdithering is offered for wide-band filters only.

WIRCam is a near infrared instrument typically mounted on the telescope for 10-days observing runs centered on the Full Moon. It uses a large share of the telescope bright time to conduct typical Principal Investigators scientific programs, as well as some larger scale programs.

WIRCam is operated exclusively through the CFHT New Observing Process (NOP). Observations are carried out through Queued Service Observing (QSO), the data are preprocessed (removal of the instrumental signature) and calibrated (photometry and astrometry) by `I`iwi (an Elixir equivalent for WIRCam), and eventually sent to the Principal Investigators on tapes or distributed through the network by the Data Archiving & Distribution System (DADS) . The raw data are archived at the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) in Victoria, and become public after a one year proprietary period (except for 05B/06A data which had there proprietary period extended to 18 months). The Terapix data processing center based in Paris proposes its services to the whole CFHT community with the data stacking, fine astrometric calibration and catalogs generation.

WIRCam was funded through the instrumentation fund by the Canadian and French Agencies (NRC and CNRS/INSU), and by special contributions from the Korea Astronomy Observatory and from the Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics consortium (CosPA) of Taiwan. The Observatoire de Grenoble and University of Montreal were contracted for the design and fabrication of major parts of the instrument. "Instrument Description" covers in detail the various parts of the instrument and the entities responsible for building them.

Note to the Principal Investigators preparing a time proposal: All the information relevant to the preparation of a time proposal and/or preparing the time distribution for the QSO's PH2 phase can be found in the "Specifications & Performance" and " New Observing Process" sections of the left menu (instrument specifications, exposure time calculator, etc...).