OMEGA 2000

Omega2000 is an imager in the near-infrared range (from z to K bands), placed on a 3.5-m telescope frontring. Thanks to a carefully designed dewar and baffling, Ω2000 can thus observe with a reduced (thermal) background from 0.85 μm up to 2,5 μm. Its rigid design at the prime focus suffers little mechanical deformations (1, 2 and 3).

Its optics, including a field corrector reducing the f-number to f/2.35, is designed to provide very low distorsion (less than one pixel, center to corner, see also spot diagram) and stable PSF, ideal for accurate astrometric studies (e.g., parallaxes of nearby brown dwarfs). With a single HAWAII-2 HgCdTe detector, Ω2000 covers a field of view of 15.5'x15.4'. The relatively wide field of view and high-transmission optics also make Omega2000 useful for deep surveys, like the ALHAMBRA NIR images of cosmological fields.

Available at: Primary focus of the CAHA Zeiss 3.5-m telescope

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In a nutshell o2kPFpos

Instrument/telescope	Ω2000/3.5 prime focus
Field optics	4-lens (f/3.9 → f/2.35)
Detector	HAWAII-2 HgCdTe 2048x2048 pixels
Field of view	15.4'x15.4'
Pixel scale	0"45 / pixel
*Geometric distorsion*	<0.06% (<1 pixel)
*Wavelength range*	0.8 μm to 2,5 μm with high QE
Filter wheels	3 wheels of 7 filters each
*Filters*	29 in total, see full list

Observing with Ω2000

Preparing observations	During observations	After observing
Requesting observing time	Graphical User Interface (GUI). Macros works, too!	Basic data reduction: Sect. 14 of manual
Original webpage	Troubleshooting	Pipeline development: see René Fassbender's dipl. thesis
Full manual	Log sheets	Alhambra final data release
Exp. time calculator	Interact with images using MIDAS commands, e.g. o2k/seeing for quick seeing estimate
Detector QE (table)
29 filters7x3 wheels	Note: considering the short exposure times in the NIR (typically 2 to 60 s), NO guiding is required for Ω2000!