NASA infrared telescope facility

A POWERFUL NEW INFRARED ARRAY CAMERA FOR THE NASA INFRARED TELESCOPE FACILITY... 

In September 1993 we will commissioa a 1.0-5.5 /xm infrared array camera for the 3.0-meter NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Manna Kea, Hawaii. This camera incorporates a Santa Barbara Research Center (SBRC) 256x256 LiSb array. Rather than giving a detailed description of the entire system (provided in Bayner et ol. 1993), we summarize briefly the overall camera design and then concentrate on one of the first innovative observing modes to be implemented real-time shift add speckle imaging. We present some first results with the camera at the telescope. 

The NASA Infrared Telescope Facility Cryogenic Echelle Spectrograph (CSHELL see Greene et al. 1993) is a new near-infrared instrument which h2is adequate sensitivity, spatial, and spectral resolution to advance our observational knowledge of the morphologies and kinematics of outflows. 

The HST can also observe in all regions of the IR, but its optics and stmetures are not cooled to minimize radiation emission, and its images are diffraction limited at IR wavelengths. In the late 1990s, NASA launched the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, a 1-m class telescope that operates inside an enclosure cooled by liquid helium to avoid the excess radiation problem. 

Fig. 4.21 The IRTF, Infrared Telescope Facility. Credit NASA, Institute of Astronomy, Univ. of Hawaii...

Abstract. This paper describes the status of NASA s Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) program. SIRTF will be a cryogenicaily cooled observatory for infrared astronomy from space and is planned for launch early in t next decade. It will be the first cryogenic space observatory to make extensive use of the powerfrd infrared detector array tednology discussed at this conference. We summarise a newly developed SIRTF mission concept and show how the availability of detector arrays has shaped the scientific rationale for SIRTF, and how the arrays themsdves have become part of the definition of the SIRTF misaon. 

Solid grisms have a grating ruled directly on the prism surface. Currently, solid grisms are used in MAGIC, the MPI fur Astronomie General-purpose Infrared Camera (Herbst et al. 1993, SPIE 1946), and are planned for NSFCAM at NASA s Infrared Telescope Facility (Shure et al. this proceedings). 

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