Replacement and upgrade of the Optical and Infrared Cameras for Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic

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The Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic (OMM) is part of an international network of small telescopes dedicating a significant fraction of their time to follow-up observations of candidate transiting exoplanets, e.g., from the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the future ARIEL ESA mission. The OMM has been very successful in its task, for instance with the recent discovery of TOI-1452b, one of the best water world candidates, a small (1.7 R_Earth) planet orbiting a low-mass star within the habitable zone, a planet that may be covered by a deep liquid ocean. This discovery will soon trigger follow-up observations with the James Webb Space Telescope to characterize its atmosphere, in particular to seek the spectral signature of water. This key discovery was made possible partly thanks to OMM's optical instrument PESTO which is unfortunately no longer operational as of August 2022 due to a major failure of its camera sub-system. The OMM also features a unique infrared camera (CPAPIR) used for searching and studying brown dwarfs and planetary mass objects. While the camera is still working, the camera's cooling system (liquid nitrogen) is operationally very demanding and costly. This successful proposal will enable the replacement of the very productive PESTO camera and equip CPAPIR with a modern close-cycled cryo-cooler that will not only reduce its operational cost but simplify the overall operations of our observatory. Both CPAPIR and PESTO are the most requested instruments by astronomers at the OMM and, as it is possible to easily switch from one instrument to the other, they are on the telescope for the majority of the year. The OMM is a unique facility in Canada, as it enables undergraduate and graduate students to get hands-on experience with state-of-the-art astronomical instruments and modern queue-mode telescope operations. Thanks to the experience acquired during their studies, many of graduates find their way to work on large observatories or in the industry.