Adaptive Optics Imaging at 1–5 Microns on Large Telescopes: The COMIC Camera for ADONIS

Citations Over TimeTop 23% of 1998 papers

Abstract

A new 1–5 μm high‐resolution camera dedicated to the ESO adaptive optics system ADONIS has been developed as a collaborative project of Observatoire de Paris‐Meudon and Observatoire de Grenoble, under ESO contract. Since this camera has been designed to correctly sample the diffraction, two focal plate scales are available: 36 mas pixel−1 for the 1–2.5 μm range and 100 mas pixel−1 for the 3–5 μm range, yielding fields of view of 45 × 45 and 128 × 128, respectively. Several broadband and narrowband filters are available as well as two circular variable filters, allowing low spectral resolution (R ∼ 60–120) imagery between 1.2 and 4.8 μm. This camera is equipped with a 128 × 128 HgCdTe/CCD array detector built by the CEA‐LETI‐LIR (Grenoble, France). Among its main characteristics, this detector offers a remarkably high storage capacity (more than 106 electrons) with a total system readout noise of ≈1000 electrons rms, making it particularly well suited for long integration time imagery in the 3–5 μm range of the near‐infrared domain. The measured dark current is 2000 electrons s−1 pixel−1 at the regular operating temperature of 77 K, allowing long exposure times at short wavelengths (λ3 μm), the performances are background‐noise limited. We have estimated the ADONIS + COMIC imaging performances using a method specially dedicated to high angular resolution cameras.

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