CIRSI: the Cambridge infrared Survey Instrument for Wide-Field Astronomy

摘要

The search for galaxies at redshifts> 3 becomes increasingly difficult in the visible since most of the light emitted by these objects if redshifited into the near infrared (wavelenths > 1 micron). Th recent development of high-performance near infrared arrays has made it practical to build a wide field survey instrument for operation in the near infrared part of the spectrum. Crisi; the combridge Infrared Survey Instrument, uses four of the HAWAII-1 MCt arrays each of which has 1024 by 1024 pixels. This paper describes a number of the novel features of CRISI and summarises the present performance achieved by CIRSI and the scientific programmes it is primcipally engaged in.