First Light

The completely refurbished Uppsala Southern Schmidt (USS, 0.5 metre corrector plate aperture) with a Newtonian focus mounted 4K x 4K CCD is nearing completion. In early July 2003, we achieved first light. This image of omega Centauri shows the central portion of the 123 x 123 arcmin field.

First light with the upgraded Uppsala Schmidt: omega Centauri The image scale is 1".8/pixel Click image at left to see full size 200kb image

Additional hardware and software improvements have been made and currently the data pipeline is being installed and checked. Some initial survey tests should be made in early October. A Cryotiger unit is used to cool the CCD instead of liquid Nitrogen, reducing daily maintenance requirements. A newly constructed control room adjacent to the Uppsala dome houses the control and data reduction computers.

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