Created 03/09/04 by EF
Updated 06/10/04 by EFWe are currently adapting Minicam to the 1.2m, as a first step toward a permanent replacement of the venerable 4shooter. It will cover approximately the same area on the sky as the 4shooter. The high quality of its chips makes it an excellent first alternative to the final replacement. Ted Groner (with help from Steve Amato) is writing the necessary software, which will be used with the final replacement as well. Andy Szentgyorgyi took the lead in Cambridge to fabricate the necessary mechanical fittings for the 1.2m. We expect its first light on the 1.2m before August 2004.
The current proposal is for a panoramic 4kx4k CCD with 15-micron pixels, off the shelf from Fairchild. It would provide nearly the same field as the 4shooter without gaps, with the same scale of 0.33 arcsec/pix. It would permit recycling the mechanical and optical designs of the 4shooter, including the filter wheel and the Fabricant/Epps field flattener. We would build a new CCD controller, based on the design for the Hectos and Mini/Megacam. The controller would be 2-3 times faster than the current one. The new CCD would have the great advantage of not requiring UV flooding. Dave Latham proposed and obtained NASA funding (as of 03 June 04) to build Keplercam. Keplercam will replace the current 4shooter 2x2 CCD mosaic.