The Development of a Wide Field Imager for the APO 3.5 MeterTelescope

小行星9512594 硅技术为我们提供了近乎完美的CCD光探测器，与旧标准（照相底片）相比，它具有非常高的量子效率和线性度，从而彻底改变了天文学。 然而，与照相底片相比，单个CCD探测器非常小，只能覆盖少量的天空，因此望远镜反射镜收集的大部分光线都被浪费了。 该计划将为阿帕奇点天文台（APO）3.5米望远镜开发一个强大的宽视场CCD相机系统，该系统将与目前建造的任何望远镜一样大（6700万像素），并将具有最先进的读出和数据处理能力。 这种多功能仪器将使广泛的天体物理观测计划成为可能，特别是那些解决观测宇宙学中紧迫的开放性问题的计划，如：宇宙膨胀的速度有多快？这种扩张会永远持续下去吗？宇宙中占引力支配地位的暗物质的性质和分布是什么？粒子物理学在宇宙诞生和演化中的作用是什么？ ***

9512594 Stubbs Silicon technology has revolutionized astronomy by giving us near perfect CCD light detectors that have very high quantum efficiency and linearity compared to the old standard: photographic plates. However, individual CCD detectors are very small compared to photographic plates and cover only a small amount of sky so that most of the light gathered by the telescope mirror is wasted. This program will develop a powerful wide-field CCD camera system for the Apache Point Observatory (APO) 3.5 meter telescope that will be as large as any yet built (67 million pixels), and will have state-of- the-art read-outs and data processing capability. This versatile instrument will make possible a wide range of astrophysical observing programs, particularly those that attack pressing open questions in observational cosmology such as: How fast is the universe expanding?; Will this expansion continue forever?; what is the nature and distribution of the dark matter that is the gravitationally dominant component of the universe?; and What is the role of particle physics in the birth and evolution of the universe? ***