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Near-infrared Imager Spectrometer and Polarimeter (NISP) is a camera, an intermediate resolution spectrograph and an imaging polarimeter being developed for upcoming 2.5m telescope of Physical Research Laboratory at Mount Abu, India. NISP is designed to work in the Near-IR (0.8-2.5 micron) using a H2RG detector. Collimator and camera lenses would transfer the image from the focal plane of the telescope to the detector plane. The entire optics, mechanical support structures, detector-SIDECAR assembly will be cooled to cryo-temperatures using an open cycle Liquid Nitrogen tank inside a vacuum Dewar. GFRP support structures would be used to isolate cryogenic system from the Dewar. Two layer thermal shielding would be used to reduce the radiative heat transfer. Molecular sieve (getter) would be used to enhance the vacuum level inside Dewar. Magnet-reedswitch combination are used for absolute positioning of filterwheels. Here we describe the mechanical aspects in detail.
As a Near-IR instrument to PRLs upcoming 2.5 m telescope, NISP is designed indigeniously at PRL to serve as a multifaceted instrument. Optical, Mechanical and Electronics subsystems are being designed and developed in-house at PRL. It will consist of imaging, spectroscopy and imaging-polarimetry mode in the wavelength bands Y, J, H, Ks i.e. 0.8 - 2.5 micron. The detector is an 2K x 2K H2RG (MCT) array detector from Teledyne, which will give a large FOV of 10 x 10 in the imaging mode. Spectroscopic modes with resolving power of R ~ 3000, will be achieved using grisms. Spectroscopy will be available in single order and a cross-dispersed mode shall be planned for simultaneous spectra. The instrument enables multi-wavelength imaging-polarimetry using Wedged-Double Wollaston (WeDoWo) prisms to get single shot Stokes parameters (I, Q, U) for linear polarisation simultaneously, thus increasing the efficiency of polarisation measurements and reducing observation time.
NISP, a multifaceted near-infrared instrument for the upcoming 2.5m IR telescope at MIRO Gurushikhar, Mount Abu, Rajasthan, India is being developed at PRL, Ahmedabad. NISP will have wide (FOV = 10 x 10) field imaging, moderate (R=3000) spectroscopy and imaging polarimetry operating modes. It is designed based on 0.8 to 2.5 micron sensitive, 2048 X 2048 HgCdTe (MCT) array detector from Teledyne. Optical, Mechanical and Electronics subsystems are being designed and developed in-house at PRL. HAWAII-2RG (H2RG) detector will be mounted along with controlling SIDECAR ASIC inside LN2 filled cryogenic cooled Dewar. FPGA based controller for H2RG and ASIC will be mounted outside the Dewar at room temperature. Smart stepper motors will facilitate motion of filter wheels and optical components to realize different operating modes. Detector and ASIC temperatures are servo controlled using Lakeshores Temperature Controller (TC) 336. Also, several cryogenic temperatures will be monitored by TC for health checking of the instrument. Detector, Motion and Temperature controllers onboard telescope will be interfaced to USB Hub and fiber-optic trans-receiver. Remote Host computer interface to remote end trans-receiver will be equipped with in-house developed GUI software to control all functionalities of NISP. Design and development aspects of NISP Electronics will be presented in this conference.
In this Astro2020 APC White Paper, we describe a Small Explorer (SMEX) mission concept called the Compton Spectrometer and Imager. COSI is a Compton telescope that covers the bandpass often referred to as the MeV Gap because it is the least explored region of the whole electromagnetic spectrum. COSI provides a significant improvement in sensitivity along with high-resolution spectroscopy, enabling studies of 511 keV electron-positron annihilation emission and measurements of several radioactive elements that trace the Galactic history of supernovae. COSI also measures polarization of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), accreting black holes, and pulsars as well as detecting and localizing multimessenger sources. In the following, we describe the COSI science, the instrument, and its capabilities. We highlight many Astro2020 science WPs that describe the COSI science in depth.
POLICAN is a near-infrared imaging linear polarimeter developed for the Cananea Near-infrared Camera (CANICA) at the 2.1m telescope of the Guillermo Haro Astrophysical Observatory (OAGH) located in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. POLICAN is mounted ahead of CANICA and consist of a rotating super-achromatic 1-2.7 micron half-wave plate (HWP) as the modulator and a fixed wire-grid polarizer as the analyzer. CANICA has a 1024 x 1024 HgCdTe detector with a plate scale of 0.32 arcsec/pixel and provides a field of view of 5.5 x 5.5 arcmin^2. The polarimetric observations are carried out by modulating the incoming light through different steps of half-wave plate angles 0, 22.5, 45, 67.5 deg, to establish linear Stokes parameters (I, Q, and U). Image reduction consists of dark subtraction, polarimetric flat fielding, and sky subtraction. The astrometry and photometric calibrations are performed using the publicly available data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey. Polarimetric calibration includes observations of globular clusters and polarization standards available in the literature. Analysis of multiple observations of globular clusters yielded an instrumental polarization of 0.51%. Uncertainties in polarization range from 0.1% to 10% from the brightest 7 mag to faintest 16 mag stars. The polarimetric accuracy achieved is better than 0.5% and the position angle errors less than 5 deg for stars brighter than 13 mag in H-band. POLICAN is mainly being used to study the scattered polarization and magnetic fields in and around star-forming regions of the interstellar medium.
The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a balloon-borne gamma-ray (0.2-5 MeV) telescope designed to study astrophysical sources. COSI employs a compact Compton telescope design utilizing 12 high-purity germanium double-sided strip detectors and is inherently sensitive to polarization. In 2016, COSI was launched from Wanaka, New Zealand and completed a successful 46-day flight on NASAs new Super Pressure Balloon. In order to perform imaging, spectral, and polarization analysis of the sources observed during the 2016 flight, we compute the detector response from well-benchmarked simulations. As required for accurate simulations of the instrument, we have built a comprehensive mass model of the instrument and developed a detailed detector effects engine which applies the intrinsic detector performance to Monte Carlo simulations. The simulated detector effects include energy, position, and timing resolution, thresholds, dead strips, charge sharing, charge loss, crosstalk, dead time, and detector trigger conditions. After including these effects, the simulations closely resemble the measurements, the standard analysis pipeline used for measurements can also be applied to the simulations, and the responses computed from the simulations are accurate. We have computed the systematic error that we must apply to measured fluxes at certain energies, which is 6.3% on average. Here we describe the detector effects engine and the benchmarking tests performed with calibrations.