Proposed instrumentation for PILOT

PILOT (the Pathfinder for an International Large Optical Telescope) is a proposed Australian/European optical/infrared telescope for Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau, with target first light in 2012. The proposed telescope is 2.4m diameter, with overall focal ratio f/10, and a 1 degree field-of-view....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:SPIE Proceedings, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II
Main Authors: Saunders, Will, Gillingham, Peter, McGrath, Andrew, Haynes, Roger, Storey, John W, Lawrence , Jonathan Simon, Burton, Michael Graham, Jenkins, Charles, Mora, Alcione
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Subjects:
Keywords: Antarctica
Fast guiding
Infrared
Instrumentation
Optical
Tip-tilt
Wide-field
Astronomical satellites
Astrophysics
Cameras
Diffraction
Image quality
Infrared devices
Instruments
Light
Optical image storage
Optical telescopes
Spacecraft obs Antarctica
Antarctic
The Antarctic
Antarc*
Antarctica
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1885/29789
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788858
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/29789/5/Saunders08.pdf.jpg
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/29789/7/01_Saunders_Proposed_instrumentation_for_2008.pdf.jpg
Description
Summary:PILOT (the Pathfinder for an International Large Optical Telescope) is a proposed Australian/European optical/infrared telescope for Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau, with target first light in 2012. The proposed telescope is 2.4m diameter, with overall focal ratio f/10, and a 1 degree field-of-view. In median seeing conditions, it delivers 0.3" FWHM widefield image quality, from 0.7-2.5 microns. In the best quartile of conditions, it delivers diffraction-limited imaging down to 1 micron, or even less with lucky imaging. The areas where PILOT offers the greatest advantages over existing ground-based telescopes are (a) very high resolution optical imaging, (b) high resolution wide-field optical imaging, and (c) all wide-field thermal infrared imaging. The proposed first generation instrumentation consists of (a) a fast, lownoise camera for diffraction-limited optical lucky imaging; (b) a gigapixel optical camera for seeing-limited imaging over a 1 degree field; (c) a 4K × 4K near-infrared (1-5 micron) camera with both wide-field and diffraction-limited modes; and (d) a double-beamed mid-infrared (7-40 micron) imaging spectrograph.

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