User's Guide to the Prime Focus Camera


Table of Contents


Introduction
Description
Hardware Overview
Software Overview
Detector Characteristics
Plate Scale and FOV
Filters
Count Rates
PFCam User Interfaces
Motor Control GUI
CCD Interface
Eventsounds
Observing with PFCam
Starting the Software
Observing Hints
Illustrations
3-D representation
2-D representation
CCD diagrams
PFCam layout

Mt. Hamilton Homepage

Filters

PFCam's filter wheel holds up to 6 filters. Filters should be requested on the telescope time application. Filters may be changed from one night to the next, but changing filters during the night is discouraged.

As of March 2008, the following 4" x 4" broad-band photometry filters are available for PFCam:

Johnson U, B, and V
Kron-Cousins R and I
Spinrad R
Gunn g
Gunn z

These filters allow one to use the full 12.6 x 12.6 arcmin field of view of the CCD (see Plate Scale and Field of View).

The old set of similar 3" x 3" broad-band filters is still available, however their use is discouraged as they cause some vignetting and limit the field of view to about 10 x 10 arcminutes. Some of the 3" filters are damaged and should not be used.

Any of Lick's collection of 2" x 2" narrow-band filters can also be used with PFCam, but they reduce the useful field of view to about 6 arcminutes.

The figure below shows the 4" broad-band filter transmission curves. -->


Support Astronomers (sa@ucolick.org)
Last modified: Tue Mar 8 18:52:00 PST 2011