The Wide Field Imager (WFI) is CCD mosiac camera being fabricated by the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, ANU, for use on both the ANU 1m telescope and on the AAT prime focus at Siding Spring Observatory.
 

Construction

• WFI will use 8 4k x 2k 3-side buttable CCDs arranged in a 2 x 4 mosaic to give a total format of 8k x 8k pixels. The CCDs in WFI will come from the MIT-LL consortium lot runs in which the RSAA and the AAO are joint participants. Each institution will contribute 4 CCDs to WFI.
• The AAO is engaged in upgrading the prime focus to accommodate WFI while the RSAA has designed (in collaboration with Auspace and the University of Melbourne) and manufactured the WFI dewar.
• The RSAA is also providing the CCD Controllers (dual 4 channel SDSU V2 controllers), controller  software, user interface and data pipeline processing software, as well as commissioning the instrument.
• The focal plane mosaic is being assembled by Dr. Gerry Luppino in Hawaii.
• The goal is to be able to read out the full WFI array in under 60 sec; recent tests at the RSAA demonstrated that this goal is likely to be met - a full 4k x 2k readout through a single channel took under 50 sec with 5 electron read noise. WFI will have one channel per CCD.

 WFI on the ANU 1m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory

• The CCDs have 15 micron pixels which will give a scale of 0.38"/pix at the 1m telescope Cass focus with a field-of-view of 52 arcmin on a side (diagonal ~1.2 deg). Available filters will be standard UBVRI plus a far-red z filter. Any 5 can be held in the wheel at the same time.
• Gary Da Costa (gdc@mso.anu.edu.au), is the RSAA astronomer who acts as WFI Project Scientist.

 WFI at the AAT

• WFI will be a stand-alone instrument at the AAT.
• The scale at the AAT prime focus will be 0.23"/pix with a field-of-view of 31 arcmin on a side (diagonal ~0.75 deg). Filters available will be standard UBVRI.
• Chris Tinney is the AAO astronomer responsible for WFI on the AAT and the AAT prime focus upgrade.
• For more information see the WFI/PFU WWW Page.

Current Status