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New Infrared Camera Gets Amazing Orion Images

Posted by timothy on from the spaceporn dept.

The BBC is reporting, as is the Register, about the new Wide-Field Camera (WFCAM) on the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. WFCAM is the world's most powerful astronomical infrared camera. It's 5.4 meters long and weighs 1500 kilograms. As part of its commissioning, it produced some stunning images of interstellar clouds in Orion.

7 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. amazing by blackomegax · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I love the composite shot, showing the zoom steppings, putting it all into perspective... The max zoom quality is jaw dropping.

  2. Of all the photos , the one I liked by Gopal.V · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's an infra red telescope and all that... it can see a lot of stuff in space BUT the photo I really loved was this Down to Earth Night shot of the telescope itself....

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
  3. Sherpa scientists? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The altitude of this thing is 13760 feet above sea level. Normal folk need extra oxygen at that altitude. Are the living quarters pressurised? Is it operated by remote control?

  4. Dusty Galaxy? by erichill · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Check out the object on the right edge toward the bottom of the xlarge picture. It looks remarkably like a spiral galaxy seen edge on. If I understand this image correctly that galaxy wouldn't be visible in the visible through that cloud. If so, it must be terrifically bright in the IR.

    --
    Credo sim. - I think I am.
  5. Definition of "Powerful"? by helioquake · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not trying to take away anything from UKIRT (which is an awesome telescope from user's perspective), what do they mean by "most powerful" here? To me it means highest sensitivity to IR light or highest spatial resolution achievable with the combination of detector (which is the theme of this release) and its optical system (UKIRT). Apparently this instrument provides the largest field of view, which is cool indeed, but would that deserves "most powerful" title? It's a bit self-serving statement to me.

    Again, I'm not making light of the instrument. Some people -- those who perform sky survey, etc. -- would find it "most powerful" indeed. But others like me (spectroscopists) would find that statement rather weak. Images are cool, but it can tell you very little about the physical condition of these objects.

    1. Re:Definition of "Powerful"? by helioquake · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree with your comment, Phirst. It's probably the most powerful SURVEY camera that I have seen.
      But I use grating/echelle spectrographs mostly, both on ground and space. So from *my* heavily biased perspective, the title of "most powerful" doesn't sound right.

      I know it's just a matter of phrasing things. Like I said, this is a nifty instrument. I've always thought that detectors & instruments should define the quality and goodness of a telescope. You know, having an 8-m telescope with no working instrument just about do us no good...

      I'm off to a party now. Happy holiday to you in Hawaii. And to all of you.

      -h

  6. Some techy trivial by phirst · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Disclaimer: I'm the instrument scientist for WFCAM.

    We did actually submit the story to slashdot, thinging they might want to scoop the BBC and The Register for a change. Got rejected, but anyway. I thought Slashdot types might be interested in some of the techy background to the instrument:

    WFCAM generates about 200GB of data per night. The data is handled (recorded then processed) by a cluster of 8 PCs (Ahem, why yes, they do run Linux), each of which has a ~650GB RAID array.

    An interesting point to note is that in total, the WFCAM system contains a total of about 60 hard disks. No commercial hard disk is rated for use above 10,000 feet, and UKIRT is at almost 14,000. Hard disks rely on atmospheric air pressure to keep the heads seperated from the disk surface, so we've even found keeping the RAIDs running had at times presented quite a challenge.

    Also, of course the PCs are fan cooled. Fan cooling doesn't work too well when there's only 60% of the air they're used to (atmospheric pressure on the summit of Mauna Kea is about 60% that at sea level), and with the combination of 2.8GHz Xeons and half a dozen disks in each 3U rackmount machine, we had to fairly seriosuly beef up the case fans to keep the machines at a sane temperature.