Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2004 · 34 citations · 0 references
Natural SciencesAstronomyPhysicsInfrared AstronomyOptical AstronomyOpticsInfrared InstrumentationInfrared TelescopesNear-infrared AstronomyObservatory InstrumentationOptical InstrumentationTelescope OpticsInfrared Detector ArraysOptical Telescope SystemsTelescope Array DesignTelescopes
The Infrared Side Port Imager ISPI is a facility infrared imager for the CTIO Blanco 4-meter telescope. ISPI has the following capabilities: 1-2.4 micron imaging with an 2K x 2K HgCdTe array, 0.3 arcsec/pixel sampling matched to typical f/8 IR image quality of ~0.6 arcsec and a 10.5 x 10.5 arcmin field of view. First light with ISPI was obtained on September 24 2002, and since January 2003 ISPI has been in operation as a common user instrument. In this paper we discuss operational aspects of ISPI, the behavior of the array and we report on the performance of ISPI during the first one and half year of operation.