Teledyne Princeton Instruments PIXIS Cameras Aiding in Search for Earth-like Planets
February 21, 2019
Teledyne Princeton Instruments, a world-renowned manufacturer of scientific imaging and spectroscopy equipment, is pleased to recognize the work of the international team that developed the second-generation Multicolor Simultaneous Camera (MuSCAT2) for the 1.52 meter Telescopio Carlos Sánchez at the Teide Observatory, Canaries, Spain. Japanese researchers from the Astrobiology Center and the University of Tokyo along with Spanish researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias developed the advanced four-color imaging instrument for studying atmospheres of transiting exoplanets.
Image Credit: The University of Tokyo, Japan Science & Technology Agency, Astrobiology Center, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.
According to the National Institutes of Natural Sciences’ Astrobiology Center, MuSCAT2 is now aiming to find and confirm a large number of transiting exoplanets, including Earth-like habitable planets orbiting stars near the Sun, in collaboration with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched in April 2018.
“We’re very excited that the MuSCAT2 developers chose our PIXIS back-illuminated CCD cameras, including our patented eXcelon® sensor technology providing enhanced sensitivity, for their observations,” comments Michael Melle, imaging product manager at Princeton Instruments. “These high-performance PIXIS detectors are among the most recent Princeton Instruments cameras, spectrographs, and optics to be installed at observatories around the world.”First-light commissioning of MuSCAT2 was made on August 24 (the night of August 23), 2017 UT. Subsequently, commissioning observations were conducted through 2017 and early 2018. The instrument started science operations in January 2018, with more than 250 telescope nights per year. The team will use MuSCAT2 in collaboration with NASA’s TESS more than 162 nights per year until at least 2022.