Description
MAIA, the Mercator Advanced Imager for Asteroseismology is a new fast 3-channel photometric instrument
MAIA, an acronym for Mercator Advanced Imager for Asteroseismology, is a three-channel instrument that targets fast-cadence three colour photometry, installed at the 1.2-m Mercator telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain). This instrument observes a 9.4×14.1 arcmin field-of-view simultaneously in three wavelength bands on three large frame-transfer CCDs. These detectors were developed for ESA’s cancelled Eddington space mission and were offered on permanent loan to the Institute of Astronomy (KULeuven, Belgium). MAIA uses its own ugr photometric system that is a crude approximation of the SDSS system. The instrument is designed to perform multi-colour observations for asteroseismology, with specific emphasis on subdwarf and white dwarf single and binary stars. We describe the design of the instrument, discuss key components, and report on its performance and first results
Technical Data
Number of cameras: 3 science and 1 guiding camera
Passbands: u, g, r+i for science, z for guiding
Cut-off wavelengths dichroics
u 395 nm
g 570 nm
r+i 870 nm
Field of view: 9.4 x 14.1 arcmin
Image quality: < 0.33 arcsec
Collimator focal length: 232 mm
Camera focal length: 160 mm (ƒ/8.25)
Guiding camera: SBIG, full field, on-axis, z-band
Detectors: E2V CCD42-C0, frame transfer
Pixels: 2K x 3K imaging pixels
Sampling: 0.275 arcsec/pixel
Operating temperature: 160°K or -113°C
Cooling: closed-cycle mechanical cooling