The Long Wavelength Infrared Camera (LWIRC) is a facility class mid-infrared,
7-13 m camera designed for the Keck I telescope. On nights with
good seeing we expect that it will provide diffraction limited imaging
with background limited sensitivity. The expected point source sensitivity at
10
m, using a 1
m bandwidth filter, is 0.37 mJ/hr, where this
takes into account that while chopping only 50% of the observation
time is spent on-source. For example, the suggested 25 mJ source
at the position of SgrA* at the center of the Galaxy [1]
can be observed
with a signal-to-noise ratio of over 10 in only a couple of minutes
observation time, provided systematic issues are accounted for properly.
Since the LWIRC shares a good deal of the electronics readout system with the previous Keck infrared instruments NIRC [2] and LWS [3], we anticipate that integration with the telescope infrastructure will proceed smoothly and that observers will be able to quickly utilize the the camera. This readout system is a hardware and software platform called the IRE, the Infrared Readout Electronics. The LWIRC project has benefited greatly from the experience and improvements to the IRE made by the earlier instruments. Likewise, we have contributed to the ongoing development of the IRE by improving the efficiency of data collection, developing and testing substantially more robust software, and improving the immunity of the system to electronic noise.
The LWIRC project was initiated by J.F. Arens and J.G. Jernigan
[4] at the
Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) of the University of California at Berkeley.
The project is currently a joint effort of SSL and Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, and the principal investigator is W.C. Danchi.