Welcome to the PANIC Project website
PANIC is the new PAnoramic Near-Infrared Camera for the 2.2m telescope on Calar Alto Observatory. The project started in September 2006. It is a joint project between MPIA (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie ) and IAA (Instituto de Astronomia de Andalucia in Granada).
The aim of the project is to build a wide-field general purpose NIR camera. Of course it will be very well suited for surveys.
With its focal plane array of 2x2 HAWAII2-RG detectors it covers a 30x30 arcmin field-of-view and it has a pixel scale of 0.45 arcsec/pixel. The cryogenic optics has three flat folding mirrors with diameters up to 270 mm and eight lenses with diameters between 115 mm and 250 mm. A compact filter unit can carry up to 19 filters distribited over four filter wheels. The wheels have cryogenic stepper motors.
The instrument has a diameter of 1.1 m and it is about 1 m long. Since the there is a weight limit of only 400 kg at the 2.2 m telescope, a lightweight cryostat design is necessary. The aluminium vacuum vessel and radiation shield have wall thicknesses of only 6 mm and 3 mm respectively. Cooling is done by liquid nitrogen.
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PANIC in a Nutshell |
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Telescope |
Cassegrain 2.2m Calar Alto |
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F Ratio |
f/8 |
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Field of view |
30' x 30' |
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Direct Imagin |
Over the whole FOV |
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Pixel scale |
0.45 arcsec/pixel |
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Detector |
2 x 2 mosaic of 4 Hawaii-2 RG |
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Gap between detectors |
167 pìxels |
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Filling factor |
98% |
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Wavelength range |
0.95– 2.45 mm with IQ 0.82-0.95 mm able to transmit |
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Filters |
Broad band ZYJHK Narrow band: ~1% |
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Intrinsic image quality |
EE80 <= 2 pixels = 0.9 arcsec=36 mm |
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Pupil Image available |
Cold stop |
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Geometrical distortions |
<= 1.5% |
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Operating temperature |
80K (liquid nitrogen) |
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Data format |
FITS |
PANIC Collaboration
PANIC is a collaborative effort of these institutions:
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Science
We list below potential scientific cases that would benefit from the panoramic imaging mode of PANIC. More details for some of them can be found in the Phase A document, section 2. A (non-exhaustive) compilation of science cases that would benefit from the other TBC observing modes is also given.
Contact us
If you have any question or suggestion about PANIC project, please feel free to contact us.