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WIYN Observatory
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WIYN Observatory
The WIYN Observatory is owned and operated by the WIYN Consortium. Its 3.5-meter telescope is the second largest optical telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Most of the capital costs for the observatory were provided by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Indiana University, and Yale University, while the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) provides most of the operating services. The NOAO is an institution of the United States; it is the national optical observatory program and supports a collection of ground-based telescopes at Kitt Peak (where WIYN is located) as well as other locations.
WIYN is a Ritchey–Chrétien telescope with an altitude-azimuth mount. The lightweight borosilicate primary mirror has a diameter of 3.49885 m (137.75") and was manufactured at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. Sixty-six active optics actuators support the primary mirror.
The telescope is located in a half-Rhombicuboctahedron dome.
Hydra is a multiobject spectrograph using fiber optics robotically positioned in the focal plane to allow up to 100 separate objects to be observed at a time. The light is guided to a spectrograph room under the main telescope where a CCD camera records the spectrum of each object. The field of view is approximately 1 degree. [1] Archived 2019-08-25 at the Wayback Machine Hydra has been operating since 1990. It was originally located at the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope before being moved to WIYN in 1994. In 2021, Hydra received a major upgrade to the "gripper" fiber positioning robot.
Funded by the NN-EXPLORE collaboration between NASA and the National Science Foundation, the NEID spectrograph searches for extra-solar planets by looking for minute variations in the radial velocity of the host star caused by the orbiting planet(s). The extremely precise radial velocities (50 cm/s) provided by NEID will provide masses and densities for exoplanets discovered by the TESS space telescope. The name NEID comes from the Tohono Oʼodham word for "to see."
The spectrograph was designed and built at Pennsylvania State University, with the construction beginning in 2016. The Port Adapter portion of the instrument, which provides guiding, focus correction, fast tip-tilt correction, and atmospheric dispersion correction to the starlight before injecting it into the optical fiber feeding the spectrograph, was built by the University of Wisconsin in collaboration with NOAO. On June 2, 2021, NEID completed commissioning.
The NEID is also assisted by The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) with super-computer time and expertise in the scientific search for new exoplanets.
The One Degree Imager (ODI) is the flagship of WIYN's new instrument initiatives. ODI utilizes both WIYN's one degree field of view and excellent image quality. The original design for ODI was to cover the one square degree field using a total of 64 Orthogonal Transfer Arrays (OTAs) with a total of 1 GigaPixel and a pixelscale of 0.11 arcseconds per pixel. Orthogonal transfer arrays allow to actively improve image sharpness by correcting images for tip/tilt motion during the integration. Corrections will be done over the entire field of view, making ODI a unique and competitive instrument in the era of wide-field surveys. ODI is funded by the WIYN partners and the National Science Foundation.
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WIYN Observatory
The WIYN Observatory is owned and operated by the WIYN Consortium. Its 3.5-meter telescope is the second largest optical telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Most of the capital costs for the observatory were provided by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Indiana University, and Yale University, while the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) provides most of the operating services. The NOAO is an institution of the United States; it is the national optical observatory program and supports a collection of ground-based telescopes at Kitt Peak (where WIYN is located) as well as other locations.
WIYN is a Ritchey–Chrétien telescope with an altitude-azimuth mount. The lightweight borosilicate primary mirror has a diameter of 3.49885 m (137.75") and was manufactured at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. Sixty-six active optics actuators support the primary mirror.
The telescope is located in a half-Rhombicuboctahedron dome.
Hydra is a multiobject spectrograph using fiber optics robotically positioned in the focal plane to allow up to 100 separate objects to be observed at a time. The light is guided to a spectrograph room under the main telescope where a CCD camera records the spectrum of each object. The field of view is approximately 1 degree. [1] Archived 2019-08-25 at the Wayback Machine Hydra has been operating since 1990. It was originally located at the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope before being moved to WIYN in 1994. In 2021, Hydra received a major upgrade to the "gripper" fiber positioning robot.
Funded by the NN-EXPLORE collaboration between NASA and the National Science Foundation, the NEID spectrograph searches for extra-solar planets by looking for minute variations in the radial velocity of the host star caused by the orbiting planet(s). The extremely precise radial velocities (50 cm/s) provided by NEID will provide masses and densities for exoplanets discovered by the TESS space telescope. The name NEID comes from the Tohono Oʼodham word for "to see."
The spectrograph was designed and built at Pennsylvania State University, with the construction beginning in 2016. The Port Adapter portion of the instrument, which provides guiding, focus correction, fast tip-tilt correction, and atmospheric dispersion correction to the starlight before injecting it into the optical fiber feeding the spectrograph, was built by the University of Wisconsin in collaboration with NOAO. On June 2, 2021, NEID completed commissioning.
The NEID is also assisted by The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) with super-computer time and expertise in the scientific search for new exoplanets.
The One Degree Imager (ODI) is the flagship of WIYN's new instrument initiatives. ODI utilizes both WIYN's one degree field of view and excellent image quality. The original design for ODI was to cover the one square degree field using a total of 64 Orthogonal Transfer Arrays (OTAs) with a total of 1 GigaPixel and a pixelscale of 0.11 arcseconds per pixel. Orthogonal transfer arrays allow to actively improve image sharpness by correcting images for tip/tilt motion during the integration. Corrections will be done over the entire field of view, making ODI a unique and competitive instrument in the era of wide-field surveys. ODI is funded by the WIYN partners and the National Science Foundation.
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