English

MuSCAT: a multicolor simultaneous camera for studying atmospheres of transiting exoplanets

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2015-09-11 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

We report a development of a multi-color simultaneous camera for the 188cm telescope at Okayama Astrophysical Observatory in Japan. The instrument, named MuSCAT, has a capability of 3-color simultaneous imaging in optical wavelength where CCDs are sensitive. MuSCAT is equipped with three 1024x1024 pixel CCDs, which can be controlled independently. The three CCDs detect lights in g2g'_2 (400--550 nm), r2r'_2 (550--700 nm), and zs,2z_{s,2} (820--920 nm) bands using Astrodon Photometrics Generation 2 Sloan filters. The field of view of MuSCAT is 6.1x6.1 arcmin2^2 with the pixel scale of 0.358 arcsec per pixel. The principal purpose of MuSCAT is to perform high precision multi-color transit photometry. For the purpose, MuSCAT has a capability of self autoguiding which enables to fix positions of stellar images within ~1 pix. We demonstrate relative photometric precisions of 0.101%, 0.074%, and 0.076% in g2g'_2, r2r'_2, and zs,2z_{s,2} bands, respectively, for GJ436 (magnitudes in gg'=11.81, rr'=10.08, and zz'=8.66) with 30 s exposures. The achieved precisions meet our objective, and the instrument is ready for operation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1509.03154,
  title  = {MuSCAT: a multicolor simultaneous camera for studying atmospheres of transiting exoplanets},
  author = {Norio Narita and Akihiko Fukui and Nobuhiko Kusakabe and Masahiro Onitsuka and Tsuguru Ryu and Kenshi Yanagisawa and Hideyuki Izumiura and Motohide Tamura and Tomoyasu Yamamuro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.03154},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Published in Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS), open access version is available from http://astronomicaltelescopes.spiedigitallibrary.org/article.aspx?articleid=2432590