CHIMERA: a wide-field, multi-colour, high-speed photometer at the prime focus of the Hale telescope

• Main Authors: Harding, L. K. (Author), Hallinan, G. (Author), Milburn, J. (Author), Gardner, P. (Author), Konidaris, N. (Author), Singh, N. (Author), Shao, M. (Author), Sandhu, J. (Author), Kyne, G. (Author), Schlichting, Hilke E (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press, 2017-04-07T18:23:03Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 The Caltech HIgh-speed Multi-colour camERA (CHIMERA) is a new instrument that has been developed for use at the prime focus of the Hale 200-inch telescope. Simultaneous optical imaging in two bands is enabled by a dichroic beam splitter centred at 567 nm, with Sloan u' and g' bands available on the blue arm and Sloan r', i' and z_s bands available on the red arm. Additional narrow-band filters will also become available as required. An electron multiplying CCD (EMCCD) detector is employed for both optical channels, each capable of simultaneously delivering sub-electron effective read noise under multiplication gain and frame rates of up to 26 fps full frame (several 1000 fps windowed), over a fully corrected 5 × 5 arcmin field of view. CHIMERA was primarily developed to enable the characterization of the size distribution of sub-km Kuiper Belt Objects via stellar occultation, a science case that motivates the frame-rate, the simultaneous multi-colour imaging and the wide field of view of the instrument. In addition, it also has unique capability in the detection of faint near-Earth asteroids and will be used for the monitoring of short-duration transient and periodic sources, particularly those discovered by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), and the upcoming Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF).