A New Acquisition and Autoguiding Camera for the ANU 2.3 m Telescope

Peter J. McGregor , Peter Conroy , Jan van Harmelen , Michael S. Bessell, PASA, 17 (1), 102.
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Camera Performance

The AP7 camera and MaxIm CCD software have been in use with the DBS at the 2.3 m telescope since September 1998. The system performs as well as we predicted. Acquisition of objects as faint as B=21.5  mag in 1.4'' seeing has been reported using 30 s integrations. This, and the autoguiding capability, have enabled several new science programs to commence on the telescope (Fig. 3). Most recently, aperture plates with small holes have been successfully used with the DBS for the first time (Fig. 4).

Figure 3: A 10 s unfiltered acquisition exposure of the field APM 821 showing two galaxies positioned on the DBS slit. The faintest stars visible are $\sim $ 17 mag.
\begin{figure} \centering\leavevmode \epsfxsize=\textwidth \epsfbox{apm821.ps}\end{figure}

Figure 4: Image of the young LMC star cluster NGC 2004 reflected from the back of a DBS aperture plate. Objects recorded by the spectrograph are seen only in light reflected from the edges of the circular apertures, and consequently appear as doughnuts.
\begin{figure} \centering\leavevmode \epsfxsize=\textwidth \epsfbox{aplate.ps}\end{figure}

The AP7 camera has been so successful that the acquisition system on the Nasmyth B Imager has now been modified to also allow its use with this instrument.

Next Section: Conclusions
Title/Abstract Page: A New Acquisition and
Previous Section: Implementation
Contents Page: Volume 17, Number 1

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