MAIA

MAIA
MAIA

    MAIA, the Mercator Advanced Imager for Asteroseismology is a new fast 3-channel photometric instrument

    MAIA, an acronym for Mercator Advanced Imager for Asteroseismology, is a three-channel instrument that targets fast-cadence three colour photometry, installed at the 1.2-m Mercator telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain). This instrument observes a 9.4×14.1 arcmin field-of-view simultaneously in three wavelength bands on three large frame-transfer CCDs. These detectors were developed for ESA’s cancelled Eddington space mission and were offered on permanent loan to the Institute of Astronomy (KULeuven, Belgium). MAIA uses its own ugr photometric system that is a crude approximation of the SDSS system. The instrument is designed to perform multi-colour observations for asteroseismology, with specific emphasis on subdwarf and white dwarf single and binary stars. We describe the design of the instrument, discuss key components, and report on its performance and first results

    Number of cameras: 3 science and 1 guiding camera
    Passbands: u, g, r+i for science, z for guiding
    Cut-off wavelengths dichroics
    u     395 nm
    g     570 nm
    r+i   870 nm
    Field of view: 9.4 x 14.1 arcmin
    Image quality: < 0.33 arcsec
    Collimator focal length: 232 mm
    Camera focal length: 160 mm (ƒ/8.25)
    Guiding camera: SBIG, full field, on-axis, z-band
    Detectors: E2V CCD42-C0, frame transfer
    Pixels: 2K x 3K imaging pixels
    Sampling: 0.275 arcsec/pixel
    Operating temperature: 160°K or -113°C
    Cooling: closed-cycle mechanical cooling

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