Palomar Schmidt Gets Giant CCD Camera
July 30, 2003 | The venerable 48-inch Schmidt telescope on Palomar Mountain in California, which took the original Palomar Observatory Sky Survey a half century ago (and is now named the Oschin Schmidt), is getting a giant, 161-megapixel CCD camera for a new generation of survey work. The camera, named QUEST (for the Quasar Equatorial Survey Team), replaces the NEAT (Near Earth Asteroid Tracker) camera that was installed only two years ago. The QUEST camera contains an array of 112 CCD chips covering an area 8 by 9 inches in size, or 4° by 4.5° on the sky. Astronomers will use it to perform deep, wide searches for new quasars, supernovae, asteroids, and other objects.
Despite some reports, QUEST is not the world's biggest astronomical CCD camera. That title is still held by the 340-megapixel MegaPrime camera newly installed on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
The QUEST team has posted details at http://hepwww.physics.yale.edu/quest/palomar.html |
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