The Dark Energy Camera (DECam)

TL;DR

The paper describes the design, components, and construction status of the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), a large mosaic CCD camera for the Dark Energy Survey at the Blanco 4m telescope.

Contribution

It provides a detailed overview of DECam's design, components, and development progress, highlighting its role in the Dark Energy Survey.

Findings

DECam will have a 3 sq. deg. field of view.

It uses 62 large CCD modules and 12 smaller CCDs for guiding.

The instrument is scheduled for delivery in 2010.

Abstract

In this paper we describe the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which will be the primary instrument used in the Dark Energy Survey. DECam will be a 3 sq. deg. mosaic camera mounted at the prime focus of the Blanco 4m telescope at the Cerro-Tololo International Observatory (CTIO). It consists of a large mosaic CCD focal plane, a five element optical corrector, five filters (g,r,i,z,Y), a modern data acquisition and control system and the associated infrastructure for operation in the prime focus cage. The focal plane includes of 62 2K x 4K CCD modules (0.27"/pixel) arranged in a hexagon inscribed within the roughly 2.2 degree diameter field of view and 12 smaller 2K x 2K CCDs for guiding, focus and alignment. The CCDs will be 250 micron thick fully-depleted CCDs that have been developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Production of the CCDs and fabrication of the optics, mechanical structure, mechanisms, and control system for DECam are underway; delivery of the instrument to CTIO is scheduled for 2010.