The ARNICA Imaging Camera

ARNICA (ARcetri Near Infrared CAmera) is the imaging camera for the near infrared bands between 1.0 and 2.5 µm that Arcetri Observatory has designed and built as a general facility for the Tirgo telescope.

The scale is 1 arcsec per pixel, with sky coverage of more than 4 arcmin times 4 arcmin on the NICMOS 3 (256 X 256 pixels, 40 µm side( detector array. The optical path is compact enough to be enclosed in a 25.4 cm diameter dewar, the working temperature of optics and detector is 76 K.

The camera is remotely controlled by a Pentium class PC, connected to the array detector control electronics via a fiber-optics link. A C-language package, running under DOS and DVX on the PC, acquires and stores the frames, and controls the timing of the array. We give an estimate of performance, in terms of sensitivity with an assigned observing time,

More information on following topics:

• Report on Grism for Arnica.
• Arnica performance at Tng.
• Arnica progress report: performance and technical results obtained in the last years at Tirgo, Not, and Vatt.
• First Light of Arnica at TNG.
• The general description (SPIE,1993)(560k)
• Arnica Optical systems.
• Characterization of the detector (Arcetri Technical Report N^ 2/94)(1594k)
• Broad - Band astronomical performaces (Arcetri Technical Report N^ 3/94)(8952k)
• Data Acquisition and Reduction methods (Arcetri Technical Report N^ 4/94)(224k)
• Manual for Arnica and LongSp controlling program Xnir (Arcetri Technical Report N^7/96)(6608k)
• List and values of photometric standards for Arnica (40k, from Hunt, L.K. et al, Astron.J., 1998)
• Data format and storage (81k)
• Software changes of 8/94 (56k)
• To get the Arnica reduction package, please contact Leslie K. Hunt
• Arnica and Longsp data:
  • CDR handling (current system)
  • WORM handling (old system)