CONICA

COudé Near Infrared CAmera

Short Description:

CONICA is an instrument for diffraction limited imaging, coronography, spectroscopy, and polarimetry at the VLT in the 1 to 5µm spectral range.

CONICA is operated only in connetion with NAOS, an adaptive optics system. The combination of both instruments is called NACO.

Project Type:

Instrument for ground-based telescope

MPE Contribution:

CONICA has been built under ESO contract by a consortium of MPIA and MPE.  MPIA has been responsible for the optics and cryo-mechanics, MPE contributed the detector and the readout electronics.

Status:

Preliminary acceptance by ESO has been finished in September 2001.

Commissioning of CONICA together with NAOS started in November 2001.

Since fall 2001 is the instrument available to the astronomical community.

Links:

CONICA pages at MPE

NACO pages at ESO

Infrared/Submillimeter Astronomy (web pages of the MPE department involved in the project)

News:

Sharp eyes at the VLT - a decade of observations with NACO

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