Commissioning Camera - ComCam

comcam

COMMISSIONING CAMERA - COMCAM

Commissioning Camera - ComCam is an alignment and image quality assessment tool that will also be a highly capable re-imaging camera for science. ComCam will have a pixel scale of 0.06 arcsec/pixel and better than 0.10 arcsecond image quality to evaluate GLAO performance across its 6×6 arcminute field of view. ComCam will produce narrow- and broad-band imaging, and potentially an etalon for wide-field, slitless spectroscopy.

 

Science with ComCam

The ComCam key scientific objectives will include:

  • Stellar populations in dwarf and nearby galaxies;
  • Identification of planetary nebulae (PNe) at 100 Mpc and beyond, and distances measurements using the PN luminosity function;
  • Blind searches for high redshift Lyα sources.

 

GMTBrO participation in ComCam

The ComCam is a project led by Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. The primary purpose of the ComCam instrument is to evaluate the natural seeing and GLAO performance of the GMT. ComCam is also meant to provide Public Relation images which will likely be extremely valuable to the administrations at the partner institutions, the NSF, and for garnering support from the general public.

Following a GMTBrO visit to the Carnegie Observatories in October 2018, the PI and Project Manager of the instrument invited GMTBrO members to work in Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Software for the project.

The results of GMTBrO efforts were presented at the Conceptual Design Review for the GMT Commissioning Camera that was held at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena on 23-24 September 2019. The review committee was composed by G. G. Williams (Chair; MMT Observatory/University of Arizona), B. McLeod and M. Mueller (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory). The ComCam project received a very positive review from the committee, and only small suggestions were addressed to the next phase of the project.

We emphasize that delivering the Software architecture to ComCam's CoDR was the first delivery of a NSEE/IMT work package to one of the GMT instruments.

There is a desire to continue the GMTBrO partnership with Carnegie Observatories for ComCam on its next Preliminary Design (PD) phase. GMTBrO is ready to keep working on the same areas of CoD phase: i) mechanical engineering; ii) systems engineering; iii) software.

 

The start of PD phase will depend on the GMTO schedule and resources availability, and should occur by early-2020.