UCLA Infrared Lab
IRIS LIGER GPI MOSFIRE FLITECAM SHARC OSIRIS NIRC2 NIRSPEC USNO IR Camera Gemini K-CAM
Brown Dwarf Spectroscopic Survey (BDSS) Center for Adaptive Optics Treasury Survey (CATS) Star Formation Regions Polarimetry Galactic Center Galaxy Clusters
UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy UCLA Division of Astronomy and Astrophysics W.M. Keck Observatory UCO Lick Observatory TMT International Observatory NASA SOFIA Observatory Center for Adaptive Optics WISE - Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Astrobiology Magazine Spitzer Space Telescope

K-Cam III

Kcam III is a near infrared camera system dedicated to the astronomical "K" band from 2.0 to 2.4 microns. The detector in this camera is the NICMOS3 mercury-cadmium-telluride (HgCdTe) array from Rockwell International Science Center (Thousand Oaks, Ca.) which has 256 x 256 pixels each 40 microns square. Originally commissioned on the University of California Observatories (UCO) 1-m Nickel Telescope on Mt. Hamilton, KCam III was then used on the 24-inch telescope at UCLA together with a Photometrics Star 1 camera system (with BVRI filters) and a dichroic beamsplitter to enable optical and IR bands to be observed simultaneously. The image scale is 0.85 arcseconds/pixel. First Light was obtained in March 1992. Current applications include the following: student teaching projects, monitoring variable stars, monitoring the optical/IR variations of active galaxies, photometry of T Tauri stars too bright for larger telescopes, observations of Io during eclipses by Jupiter's shadow. K-CAM III is now retired.

Reference: "Infrared Astronomy with Arrays: The Next Generation", I.S. McLean, editor, Kluuwer Academic Publ., Netherlands.

Detector (NICMOS III HgCdTe Array):

  • Format: 256x256 pixels
  • Pixel Size: 40 microns
  • Full Well: 240,000 e- with a reverse bias of 0.6V
  • Dark Current: 1 e-/sec/pix at 77K
  • Read Noise: 47e-, correlated double sampling, and 26e-, multiple sampling with 4 reads.
  • Q.E.: 60% at 2 microns

Camera at Lick 1-m Telescope

  • Optics: 1:1 ZnSe re-imaging lens that provides a cold stop
  • Plate Scale: 0.48 arcsec/pixel
  • Field of View: 2' x 2'
  • Filter: K' (1.95 - 2.35 microns)
  • Gain: 15 e-/ADU
  • Background: 750 e-/sec/pixel
  • Sensitivity: K=17.3, 6 sigma, 45 min for point sources
  • Photometry: 2% for point sources