Blanco Instruments 20042008

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Blanco Instruments 2004-2008

• Instrument 2004 2005 2006 2007 Replacement
• Mosaic 8K CCD Imager yes yes yes yes
• ISPI 2K IR Imager yes yes -- -- NEWFIRM
• NEWFIRM 8K IR Imager share share
• HYDRA MOS (Fiber) yes yes yes yes
• RC Spectrograph yes (SOAR)
• Echelle Spectrograph yes ? ? (SOAR)

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Southern Hemisphere US facilities 2004-2008

• SOAR 4.2-m -gt 6 x 6 arcmin field, Adaptive
  optics
• Gemini 8m -gt narrow-field MOS spectroscopy OIR
  instruments, MCAO. Second generation instruments
  (2008-2009) still to be defined may include
  KAOS.
• Magellan 6.5-m (x 2) -gt One telescope will have
  F/5 (like MMT), share Megaprime (24x24 arcmin)
• SALT 11-m -gt spectroscopy, specialized, no public
  time anticipated

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Mosaic II

• Plusses
• Good site, good telescope, good photometry
• Reliable - (except we have a failed CCD)
• Rapid filter change (lt 10 seconds), lots of
  filters, fast shutter (10 ms uniformity)
• Minuses
• Image quality issues - telescope, corrector,
  environment?
• Slow readout (1.5 minutes in 16-channel mode)
• Capable, but complex data acquisition system -
  both hardware and software
• SPIE 3355 CCDs - 487, Software - 497, Hardware
  -577 (1998)

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Mosaic II - Improvements?

• Replace the failed CCD (March 2004)
• Improve the telescope imaging performance
• Telescope primary mirror radial supports
• Telescope active optics system
• Dome environment
• Evaluate corrector performance
• Pipelines for data reduction
• Data into NOAO archive

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Performance metrics

• LSST metrics
• (a) Faint Time window A ? ? / ?(psf) ? ?1/2
• (b) Faint stellar A ? ? / ?(psf) ?1/2
• (c) Faint resolved galaxies A ? ? / ?1/2
• Where sky noise limited exposures are assumed in
  all cases, and
• A Telescope primary area
• ? Detector area
• ? efficiency (everything from clouds to readout
  time)
• ?(psf) area of stellar point spread function
• ? cycle time
• ? background sky brightness

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Performance Comparison

• Faint Galaxy Performance (A?? / ?1/2)
• LSST 79
• PanSTARS 15
• CFHT Megacam 2.7
• Subaru 2.2
• SDSS 1.7
• VST 1.4
• VISTA (IR) 0.93
• CTIO 4m Mosaic 0.9
• CTIO 4m DEC (2deg2) 11