First Light for CFHT-IR
Credit: Image courtesy of R. Doyon1, JL Beuzit2, B. Calder3, & M. Riopel1
1 Université de Montréal, Canada
2 Observatoire de Grenoble, France
3 CFHT, Hawaii
Since last Friday, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope has a new instrument
in operation, CFHT-IR: a near-infrared general purpose camera for direct
imaging and
multi-object spectroscopy.
The very first image taken by CFHT-IR attached to the telescope is featured
in this week CFHT's Image of the week: the Globular Cluster M15.
The image was obtained under good seeing conditions (0.5arcsec) with a
broad filter centered at 1.6 microns, the H-band.
CFHT-IR has been developed as a collaborative effort between Université de
Montréal and CFHT. The camera will be available for science programs as of
January 2001.
CFHT-IR, similarly to KIR, is
based on a Rockwell 1024 X 1024 HAWAII chip. Its full field of view is 3.6 X 3.6
arcminutes. CFHT-IR can operate from 0.8microns to 2.5microns. It can also
be fitted behind the
OSIS spectrograph to provide near-infrared
multi-object spectroscopic capabilities in the 1.1 to 1.8 micron window.
A complete description of CFHT-IR can be found on this web
site.
Performances:
The data obtained during last week commissioning run demonstrate that the
camera is functional and performs well within desired specifications.
Good fortune provided very good seeing conditions allowing demonstration of the
excellent image quality throughout the field-of-view.
A complete performance analysis will be posted on the CFHT-IR web page in
the following weeks. Other images of interest can be found at the same
location.
Technical description:
