LAIWO: a new wide-field CCD camera for Wise Observatory

摘要

LAIWO is a new CCD wide-field camera for the 40-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope at Wise Observatory in Mitzpe Ramon/Israel. The telescope is identical to the 40-in. telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile, which is described in [2]. LAIWO was designed and built at Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. The scientific aim of the instrument is to detect Jupiter-sized extra-solar planets around I=14-15 magnitude stars with the transit method, which relies on the temporary drop in brightness of the parent star harboring the planet. LAIWO can observe a 1.4 x 1.4 degree field-of-view and has four CCDs with 4096*4096 pixels each The Fairchild Imaging CCDs have a pixel size of 15 microns. Since they are not 2-side buttable, they are arranged with spacings between the chips that is equal to the size of a single CCD minus a small overlap. The CCDs are cooled by liquid nitrogen to a temperature of about -100 °C. The four science CCDs and the guider CCD are mounted on a common cryogenic plate which can be adjusted in three degrees of freedom. Each of these detectors can also be adjusted independently by a similar mechanism. The instrument contains large shutter and filter mechanisms, both designed in a modular way for fast exchange and easy maintenance.