Category: Hardware

It Begins: Clio Unpacking

The invasion of LCO has begun. A scouting party consisting of Manny Montoya and Richard Sosa arrived this weekend and began unpacking the Clio2 infrared camera. Here is their report:

Day 1: “Clio was unpacked yesterday morning and we confirmed that nothing was damaged in shipping. Clio was put on the vacuum pump and we confirmed that we had not lost vacuum. The electronics rack and other stuff was unpacked and accounted for. The electronics rack cabling was tied down a little more securely since this was not possible before it left Tucson, and we also confirmed that nothing had broken during shipping. One thing that did get a little tweaked was the monitor and keyboard support to rack were bent. We straightened them out and put nuts behind it to make it more secure. The rack was then plugged into Clio and the computer, temp. controller, motor control were all tested, checking both the physical conection and through the runclio command on the gui. We then plugged into the network, it was not working so Emilio helped us with the vlan connection.”

Manny checking out Clio2 in the cleanroom.

Day2: “This morning we took the ring up to the telescope and confirmed that it fit on the MagAO NAS. We also checked the flower box to window measurements, we still have to check these with Clio to confirm there are no collision points, but the ring did fit. After the ring was confirmed to fit, we took it back down and put Clio2 and its cart together. This afternoon we are moving everthing into the clean room to prepare for cooling of Clio2 tommorow.”

Richard checks that the Clio2 mounting ring fits. It's nice when we drill the holes in the right place the first time.
Proof that this is actually happening at LCO. Clay and Baade behind Manny as he escorts the ring back down to the clean room.
Clio2 and the mounting ring being mated.
Clio2 all ready to go. Just needs a cooldown.

Stay tuned for more MagAO action.

Tracking Clio

Our IR science camera, Clio, has arrived in Chile and is in transit to LCO.  Here’s a pic from last month in Arizona: 

Clio and friends
Clio flanked by Manny Montoya (left) and Mitch Nash (right), in the lab at Steward last month.

Stay tuned – more updates about Clio coming soon.

WFS Readnoise

While the NAS was mounted on the telescope we took a quick set of readnoise measurements with the CCD39. Here are the results. The only major caveat is that the telescope was not tracking, so we didn’t test whether the drives have any impact. Otherwise, this is the most realistic set of RON measurements we have taken to date. We are very happy with the results, especially the 156kHz 3.8 electrons. This number essentially sets the limit to how faint our guide star can be, so keeping it low is important.

Pixel Rate (kHz) Frame Rate (fps) RON (e-)
156 80 3.8
400 197 5.8
900 893 8.4
2500 1053 10.2

Note: these are determined using the actual gains from Scimeasure, rather than assuming 0.5. This can cause as much as an 8% difference.

Interlude: Installing new cold stops and a J-band filter into Clio2

Meanwhile, back in Tucson… We interrupt the NAS Fitcheck program to bring you this update on the Clio2 infrared camera.

After the Pre-Ship Review for Clio2 in Amsterdam in July, we have been completing preparations to receive diffraction-limited near-IR to thermal-IR photons from MagAO. Yesterday and today we installed the new J-band filter, and the cold pupil stops sized for Magellan. This was done in a CAAO lab at Steward Observatory in Tucson, where Clio2 is undergoing its final testing before shipment.

Cold pupil stops: Clio2 used to be “Clio” and was installed on the MMT telescope in Arizona. The MMT, like Magellan, is a 6.5-m telescope, but the Magellan secondary is 0.85m while the MMT secondary is 0.7m. Therefore, because the pupil is different, we needed two new cold stops for Clio2 on Magellan. A cold stop is a cryogenically-cooled metal mask located at an image of the telescope pupil, and its purpose is to block stray light (heat sources in the dome cause a lot of background thermal light) from contaminating the infrared image. Here is a picture of the pupil wheel with the new cold stops:

Clockwise from Phil's hand: 3-hole non-redundant aperture mask (NRM); 6-hole non-redundant aperture mask (NRM); Wide-camera cold stop (home); M-band apodized-phase plate (APP); L'-band apodized-phase plate (APP); Narrow-camera cold stop.

We also added a new J-band filter, taking out the old 3-5um Janostech filter from filter-wheel 1:

Clockwise from the red arrow: J (new), Blocked (for darks), Open (home), MKO M', Barr M, Direct vision prism, 3.1um, Barr L'.

We updated the Clio2 user manual at http://zero.as.arizona.edu/groups/clio2usermanual/ so that we can repeat this in Chile if need be.  Note the tools required: Most of the wrenches were found in a standard set of Allen keys, except for the 0.035” driver which is a special size.

Tools required for changing Clio2 filters: Phillips/flat head, 0.035, 5/64, 3/32, 7/64, and 9/64 inch Allen keys.

It took about 3 hours to take it apart and insert the new filter and pupil stops, including finding new spacers, etc.  It took about 1 hour to put it all back together.

 

T.J. Rodigas (foreground) and Andy Skemer (background) helped take Clio2 apart.
The box labeled 3 and 4 contains filter wheels 1 and 2. The box labeled 2 contains the cold pupil stops. We disconnected the wires and unscrewed the bellows (those keep the shafts straight at cryo temperatures) to access the filter and pupil wheels.
The same view as the previous image, with the filter and pupil wheels removed.
Two by two, hands of blue
Opening the pupil box to put in the new cold stops, and also Phil put in a new home switch. (Otherwise we could have just inserted the new cold stops through the port and not had to open it all the way.)
Oli Durney putting Clio2 back together