DESCRIPTION |
MIRAC2 (Mid-Infrared Array Camera) was built by Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, Harvard
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Center for Advanced Space Sensing at the Naval Research
Laboratory. It uses a Rockwell HF-16 128 X 128 arsenic-doped silicon blocked-impurity-band (BIB) hybrid
array operating at 5 K in a liquid-helium-cooled cryostat.
The operating wavelength of MIRAC2 is 2 to 28 µm. Using 20 parallel readout lines and frame rate of 10 KHz,
the array exhibits low noise and good linearity at high background flux, which is essential for 10 and 20 µm
ground-based observing conditions. Peak efficiency of 0.42 at 22 µm, and a well size of 120,000 electrons.
MIRAC2 operated on United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) 3.8-meter and the IRTF 3.0-meter telescopes for
observing a variety of objects including infrared-luminous galaxies, planetary nebulae, star forming regions,
young stellar objects, and Solar System objects. Nominal settings at UKIRT and IRTF give diffraction-limited
imaging with 0.34 and 0.27 arcsec/pixel (respectively). The sensitivity on the IRTF at 11.7 µm, 10% bandwidth
filter, chop-nod, source in one beam, 1 sigma, one minute total time is 25 mJy/arcsec surface brightness and
43 mJy point source.
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