Andrea Di Paola

SWIRCAM: a NIR imager-spectrometer to search for extragalactic supernovae

We present the main characteristics and astronomical results of SWIRCAM, a NIR imager-spectrometer mainly devoted to the search for extragalactic Supernovae, in the frame of the SWIRT project, a joint scientific collaboration among the Astronomical Observatories of Rome, Teramo and Pulkovo. The camera is currently at the focal plane of the AZT-24 1.1 m telescope at the Observing Station of Campo Imperatore, operated by the Astronomical Observatory of Rome. SWIRCAM saw its first light during December 1998 and it is currently employed for both the SWIRT operative phase and other institutional projects.

Digitization and Scientific Exploitation of the Italian and Vatican Astronomical Plate Archives

There is a widespread interest to digitize the precious information contained in the astronomical plate archives, both for the preservation of their content and for its fast distribution to all interested researchers in order to achieve their better scientific exploitation. This paper presents the first results of our large-scale project to digitize the archive of plates of the Italian Astronomical Observatories and of the Specola Vaticana. Similar systems, composed by commercial flat-bed retro-illuminated scanners plus dedicated personal computers and acquisition and analysis software, have been installed in all participating Institutes. Ad-hoc codes have been developed to acquire the data, to test the suitability of the machines to our scientific needs, and to reduce the digital data in order to extract the astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic content. Two more elements complete the overall project: the provision of high quality BVRI CCD sequences in selected fields with the Campo Imperatore telescopes, and the distribution of the digitized information to all interested researchers via the Web. The methods we have derived in the course of this project have been already applied successfully to plates taken by other Observatories, for instance at Byurakan and at Hamburg.

The wide-field eyes of the Large Binocular Telescope

The Large Binocular Telescope is currently equipped with a couple of wide field Prime Focus. The two cameras are optimized for, respectively, the blue and the red portion of the visible spectrum. The history of this project is here sketched up and the current status is shown. The Blue channel is currently working onboard the telescope and provided what has been named the first-light of the telescope in single eye configuration.

The ASTRI/CTA mini-array software system

ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) is a Flagship Project financed by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, and led by INAF, the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics. The main goals of the ASTRI project are the realization of an end-to-end prototype of a Small Size Telescope (SST) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) in a dual- mirror configuration (SST-2M) and, subsequently, of a mini-array comprising seven SST-2M telescopes. The mini-array will be placed at the final CTA Southern Site, which will be part of the CTA seed array, around which the whole CTA observatory will be developed. The Mini-Array Software System (MASS) will provide a comprehensive set of tools to prepare an observing proposal, to perform the observations specified therein (monitoring and controlling all the hardware components of each telescope), to analyze the acquired data online and to store/retrieve all the data products to/from the archive. Here we present the main features of the MASS and its first version, to be tested on the ASTRI SST-2M prototype that will be installed at the INAF observing station located at Serra La Nave on Mount Etna in Sicily.

The double Prime Focus camera for the Large Binocular Telescope

The Prime Focus for the Large Binocular Telescope are a couple of Prime Focus stations each equipped with four 4kx2k CCDs and a six lenses corrector with an aspheric surface and the first lens as large as roughly 800mm in diameter. These cameras will cover almost half degree of Field of View on 8m-class telescopes with unprecedented velocity of F/1.4. The two units are optimized for the Red and Blue portions of the visible wavelength and additionally an extension to J and H bands is foreseen. An overview of the project, including the optomechanics, the cryogenics, the electronics, and the software is given along with a preliminary account of lessons learned and on how much the second unit, the Red one, the schedule of which is shifted with respect to the Blue one by several months, will take advantage from the experience gained in the Blue unit assembly and integration.

Large Binocular Camera: the final acceptance tests of the blue channel

The Large Binocular Camera (LBC) is the double optical imager whose blue channel is going to start the commissioning phase at the Large Binocular Telescope (2x8.4 m). We present the updated characteristics of the CCD camera and its characterization performed in the laboratory of the Rome Observatory and in the integration room of the Arcetri Observatory.

ROSI: a new cryogenic solution for the CCD on the Schmidt focal planes

In this paper we present the new optical camera ROSI mounted at the 60/90/180 Schmidt telescope of the Campo Imperatore Station. We have developed a new LN2 compact cryostat designed to be mounted directly at the internal focus of the telescope and optimized to obtain a very long duration of the cryogenic liquid. The instrument is based on a 2K by 2K thinned EEV cooled down to 180K and despite of the reduced capacity of the vessel the overall holding time of LN2 is greater than 10 hours, providing a long working cycle. The CCD is controlled by a modified version of the Astrocam DUO provided by LSR that offers both a high readout speed and a low noise. ROSI has been equipped with the same high transmission filter set use din SUSI2 provided by CETEV. The computer design of the entire instrument allows a negligible obscure of the light path, comparable to the traditional one of the Schmidt telescopes equipped with photographic plates.

The design of dispersing elements for a highly segmented, very wide- field spectrograph

Wide field spectrograph at the largest optical telescopes will be decisive to address the main open questions in modern astrophysics. The key feature of this instrument is the modular concept: the spectrograph is the combination of about one thousand identical small cameras, each carrying a few slits and operating at low to moderate spectral resolution, to be illuminated at the Cassegrain focus of an existing 8m class telescope. The dispersing element to be used in these small cameras has to satisfy some requirements in term of efficiency, resolution, size, small series production. Moreover the cameras have to work both in imaging and spectroscopy modes, therefore a GRISM configuration of the dispersing element is suitable. Based on these considerations, we have focused our attention to Volume Phase Holographic Gratings (VPHGs) since they show large peak efficiency in the target spectral range (400-800 nm), they can be arranged in a GRISM configuration reaching relative large resolution. The main constrains concern the available room for the dispersing element, indeed the camera design is very compact. As a consequence, slanted VPHGs are studied and optimized in combination with normal and Fresnel prisms.

Wide-field imaging on 8- to 100-meter class telescopes

It is generally believed that very fast cameras imaging large Fields of View translate into huge optomechanics and mosaics of very large contiguous CCDs. It has already been suggested that seeing limited imaging cameras for telescopes whose diameters are larger than 20m are considered virtually impossible for a reasonable cost. It has also been suggested that using existing technology and at a moderate price, one can build a Smart Fast Camera, a device that placed on aberrated Field of View, including those of slow focal ratios, is able to provide imaging at an equivalent focal ratio as low as F/1, with a size that is identical to the large focal ratio focal plane size. The design allows for easy correction of aberrations over the Field of View. It has low weight and size with respect to any focal reducer or prime focus station of the same performance. It can be applied to existing 8m-class telescopes to provide a wide field fast focal plane or to achieve seeing-limited imaging on Extremely Large Telescopes. As it offers inherently fast read-out in a massive parallel mode, the SFC can be used as a pupil or focal plane camera for pupil-plane or Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing for 30-100m class telescopes. Basing upon Smart Fast Camera concept, we present a study turned to explain the pliability of this instrument for different existing telescopes.

AQuA: an automatic pipeline for fast transients detection

AQuA (Automatic QUick Analysis) is a software designed to manage data reduction and prompt detection of near infra-red (NIR) afterglows of GRB triggered by the dedicated instruments onboard satellites and observed with the robotic telescope REM. NIR observations of GRBs early afterglow are of crucial importance for GRBs science, revealing even optical obscured or high redshift events. The core of the pipeline is an algorithm for automatic transient detection, based on a decision tree that is continuously upgraded through a Bayesian estimator (DecOAR). It assigns to every transient candidate different reliability coefficients and delivers an alert when a transient is found above the reliability threshold.