People involved at OAB: Bregoli, Ciattaglia, Diolaiti, Innocenti
The Infrared Test Cameras (IRTC) are two near infrared technical imagers, conceived for the commissioning of the Gregorian foci of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The IRTC design is characterized by three combinations of field of view-focal plane sampling, to allow the use of the instrument in different working conditions, ranging from the commissioning of the telescope in seeing-limited mode to the testing of the performance of the LBT adaptive optics system. The optics, the mechanics and the control electronics are based on a custom design; a commercial infrared camera, using a InGaAs sensor, was chosen as detector.
The project, coordinated by OAB, was carried out in collaboration with the Astronomy Dept. - Univ. of Bologna (G. Cosentino, I. Foppiani), the Max-Planck Institut für Astronomie - Heidelberg and INAF-Arcetri Obs. (M. Lombini, with OAB at the time of writing).
The design and construction of these two technical imagers started in February 2007 on a very fast track: the first IRTC was completed and formally accepted in November 2007, the second a few months later; both units were delivered and installed by OAB in early 2008.
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