Instrument Information
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| IDENTIFIER |
urn:nasa:pds:context:instrument:palomar.oschin_schmidt_1m2.quest_camera::1.1
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| NAME |
NEAT QUEST CAMERA
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| TYPE |
IMAGER
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| DESCRIPTION |
The QUEST camera (Baltay et al. 2007) began operations at Palomar Observatory in June 2003 and replaced the tri-camera. It was designed and constructed at Yale University and consists of 112 CCD chips manufactured by the Sarnoff Corporation. Four rows, or fingers, each contain twenty-eight CCDs. Each CCD is 600 x 2400 with 13 micron square pixels. The pixel scale is 0.87 arc-sec/pixel. The camera covers an area of 4.6 degrees by 3.6 degrees with an effective area of 9.6 square degrees of sky. The central wavelength is 760 nm. During the point-and-track observations used by NEAT, a red (effective wavelength 610 nm) Bessel filter was used.The table below provides a comparison of the QUEST and tri-camerainstruments used by NEAT at Palomar Observatory.--------------------------------------------------------------| Site Pal/Tri-cam Palomar/QUEST || Dates of Operation: 4/01 - 6/03 6/03 - 4/07 || Telescope Diameter: 1.2m 1.2m || f/ratio: 2.50 2.50 || Camera: 4096 x 4096 x 3 600 x 2400 x 112 || Pixel Size: 15 x 15 u 13 x 13 u || Pixel Scale: 1.01"/pix 0.87"/pix || Cooling: TEC @ ~-30C LN2 @ -120C || Filter: None 610 nm || IAU Site Code: 644 644 || || Latitude / Longitude: +33deg 21.4' 116deg 51.8'W || Elevation / Timezone: 1726.3m UTC - 8 ||____________________________________________________________|The fingers are symmetrical about the bore sight. As a result, the pointing centers listed in the "logs-dot-group" file are the pointing centers of the bore sight; not CCD chip centers. Fingers B and C are offset from the bore sight by +/-30.07 arc-secs (0.5012 deg.) while fingers A and D are offset by +/-90.17 arc-secs (1.5028 deg.), respectively. The twenty-eight CCDs are laid out in a North-South orientation (chips 01-28) from +/-2.25 degrees (chips 01 - 28) from the bore sight pointing coordinates (see table 1, below). FingerCCD D C RA RA DEC01 -1.5028 -0.5012 2.248302 -1.5028 -0.5012 2.081903 -1.5028 -0.5012 1.915504 -1.5028 -0.5012 1.749005 -1.5028 -0.5012 1.582606 -1.5028 -0.5012 1.416007 -1.5028 -0.5012 1.249508 -1.5028 -0.5012 1.082909 -1.5028 -0.5012 0.916410 -1.5028 -0.5012 0.749811 -1.5028 -0.5012 0.583212 -1.5028 -0.5012 0.416613 -1.5028 -0.5012 0.249914 -1.5028 -0.5012 0.083315 -1.5028 -0.5012 -0.083316 -1.5028 -0.5012 -0.249917 -1.5028 -0.5012 -0.415518 -1.5028 -0.5012 -0.583219 -1.5028 -0.5012 -0.749820 -1.5028 -0.5012 -0.916421 -1.5028 -0.5012 -1.082922 -1.5028 -0.5012 -1.249523 -1.5028 -0.5012 -1.416024 -1.5028 -0.5012 -1.582625 -1.5028 -0.5012 -1.749026 -1.5028 -0.5012 -1.915527 -1.5028 -0.5012 -2.081928 -1.5028 -0.5012 -2.2483--------------------------------Table 1: QUEST CCD chip offsets, in degrees, for fingers C and D. Fingers B and A are mirror copies and consist of the same, positive, values (ie finger B's RA offset is 0.5012 degrees and A's RA offset is 1.5028 degrees).Regardless of the camera, each CCD chip read to a unique output file. Filenames are based on the universal start time of the exposure and, if appropriate, identify the specific chip used.Within the QUEST data, the overscan regions are available in the 40 extra rows (rows 600-640). The QUEST images are 3.1 Mb in size, uncompressed, with North towards the left and West downward initially.
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| REFERENCES |
Baltay, C., D. Rabinowitz, P. Andrews, A. Bauer, N. Ellman, and 15 others, The QUESTLarge Area CCD Camera, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP)119, 1278-1294, doi 10.1086/523899, 2007.
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