Haleakala Observatories

Remote observatory for long-term monitoring of tenuous emissions from planetary atmosphere and magnetosphere

Overview

The Tohoku University Haleakala observatories were first installed in March 2006, with the aim of continuous monitoring of faint emissions from exosphere/magnetosphere of planets (Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, etc.) We employ two telescopes (T60 and T40) with several kinds of unique instruments. This program is in collaboration with UH/IfA PLANETS.
Data

T60

T60 is a 60-cm reflective telescope with Cassegrain and Coude foci. Daily operation is usually made remotely or semi-automatically. It has four kinds of instruments dedicated for various observing targets:

• DIPOL-2 (Cassegrain)- A double-image high precision polarimeter (ADS)
• MILAHI (Coude No.3)- Mid-Infrared Laser Heterodyne Instrument (Nakagawa et al. 2016)
• VISP (Coude No.0)- Visible Imager and Spectrograph with coronagrphy
• Planetary Imaging Camera (Coude No.0A)
• Additional three Coude ports are avirable for guest instruments.

t60optical_design | Dimension of frange plate at Cassegrain focus

T40

T40 is a 40-cm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope coupled to a high-resolution (R=67,000) echelle spectrograph with an integral field Unit (IFU). A wide field-of-view monochromatic imager is attached onto the telescope.

• high-resolution echelle spectrograph with IFU
• wide-FOV monochromatic imager

T60 / VISP(Visible Imager and SPectrograph with coronagraphy)

■ Specifications

T60 / High-resolution echelle spectrograph with IFU

The integral field unit (IFU) consists of 96 optical fibers (AFS50/125Y low-OH fiber from Fiberguide Industries). The fibers are arranged in 8 by 12 array at the telescope focus corresponding to 41″ by 61″ with a spatial resolution of 5.1″ on the sky. A micro-lens array is attached on the input end of the IFU to inclease a fill-factor and to control the NA of input beam. The IFU was developped at ATRC in Maui under collaboration with IfA/UH. A pellicle beamsplitter and a guiding camera was installed in front of the IFU input end to make precise pointing and tracking.

■ Specifications

T60 / Wide-FOV Monochromatic Imager

■ Specifications