The Wide Field Camera (WFC) is an optical mosaic camera for use at the prime focus of the
2.5m
Isaac Newton Telescope (INT).
The WFC consists of 4 thinned EEV 2kx4k CCDs. The CCDs have a pixel
size of 13.5 microns corresponding to 0.33 arcsec/pixel. The edge to edge limit
of the mosaic, neglecting the ~1 arcmin inter-chip spacing, is 34.2 arcmins.
The cycle time for the whole mosaic is around 42 seconds. A maximum of 6 filters
could be installed in the wheel. Both broadband and Stromgren filter sets are
available, as well as a range of narrowband filters.
IMPORTANT: in case a long run is going to be covered by several observers, please let us know well in
advance so that student support can be scheduled each time a new team goes up.
IMPORTANT (since 5 Nov 2015): Please read carefully the info about filling the WFC cryostat.
News:
August 2013: Significant ellipticity of images in WFC data observed during the last months has been traced to bad tracking
due to an irregularity in a specific drive gear (namely the worm driving the INT hour angle wheel). This has been addressed
via a periodic correction in the telescope-control software released on 1st Aug 2013, and on-sky tests and independent
data taken after this date show a considerable improvement in the INT image quality. WFC tracked images exposed as
long as 2-3 minutes, as well as longer exposed guided images taken in very good natural seeing 0.5" now have FWHM=0.8-0.9"
in the WFC, and star ellipticities give e < 0.1.
September 2012: Two new narrow band filters arrived
(NOVA782HA and
NOVA804HA),
being offered by the Netherland Reasearch School for Astronomy (NOVA) which provided the funding
(PI: David Sobral).
August 2010: On a shared-risk basis, binning is supported for all chips and windowing and/or binning are supported for chip 4 only
(more info here).
