SPARTAN Near-IR Camera
(Revised February 5, 2020)
System Overview
The Spartan Infrared Camera is a high spatial resolution near-IR imager. Spartan has a focal plane consisting of four "Hawaii-II" 2048x2048 pixel HgCdTe detectors. NOTE - the detectors don't have all quadrants fully functional - see the "Cookbook" for details. Although two different scales were provided, only one is now supported: the f/12 channel offers an FOV of 5.04 x 5.04 arcmin at 0.066 arcsec/pixel; the scale was chosen to resolve the diffraction-limited core of tip-tilt-corrected images in the H, and K bands. The f/21 channel, which has been disabled, had an FOV of 3.05 x 3.05 arcmin with a scale of 0.040 arcsec/pixel (Loh et al., 2012, PASP, 124, 343). Spartan has two filter wheels which together can hold a total of 29, 50mm diameter filters of thickness up to 15mm. Broadband Y, J, H and K (based on the MKO-NIR prescription) and 9 narrow-band filters are available. (For details see Spartan filters.)
For more information, contact the SPARTAN support staff. Further information is available from the Spartan IRC home page at MSU. (In particular, look at the "observer" pages. However, be aware that the MSU pages are "legacy" information. In case of discrepancies between the MSU pages and the SOAR pages, the latter are likely to be correct; contact support staff if necessary.)
Useful Information
The Spartan Cookbook provides a good introduction, however some of the specifics related to bad quadrants or recommended flat field exposure times have evolved.
This page on trouble-shooting will solve many problems. Note - some of the steps listed are things the observer can do, but please let the telescope operator know beforehand, since they may also be able to help. The more extreme interventions require the operator.
NOTE - All magnitudes in the documentation are "Vega" magnitudes (Vega = 0), not "AB" magnitudes.
Exposure Times with SPARTAN
Further information is available from the Spartan IRC home page at MSU
