Latest news

New detector at CAHA

jmiguel — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 10:01:14 +0000

The new PANIC detector, a monolithic HAWAII-4RG composed of a matrix of 4096x4096 pixels with a pixel size of 15 microns, has just arrived to CAHA. Next weeks it will go to MPIA to start the integration in PANIC !

SEA Award

jmiguel — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 11:12:42 +0000

We want to congratulate Conchi Cárdenas for having received the "III SEA Awrad for the best Spanish PhD Thesis on Instrumentation, Computing and Technological Development in Astronomy and Astrophysics (2017-2018)".

More info here (CAHA) and here (SEA).

New detector ordered

jmiguel — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 07:59:27 +0000

The new project for the renovation of the current mosaic of detectors with a new one has begun during 2018.
The old mosaic composed by four HAWAII-2RG detectors of 18 microns pixel will be replaced by a monolithic HAWAII-4RG composed of a matrix of 4096x4096 pixels with a pixel size of 15 microns.

The order of the new detector has been already placed in September 2018 and it is expected to be received within one year to the MPIA.

New publication: "PANIC: A General-purpose Panoramic Near-infrared Camera for the Calar Alto Observatory", M.-C. Cárdenas Vázquez et al, PASP 130, 984

jmiguel — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 11:45:42 +0000

Publication of new paper describing PANIC instrument: "PANIC: A General-purpose Panoramic Near-infrared Camera for the Calar Alto Observatory", M.-C. Cárdenas Vázquez et al, PASP 130, 984

You can find the final electronic version, published on the 29th, Dec.2017, in this link: https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/aa9884

Instrument acceptance

jmiguel — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 07:55:21 +0000

In November 2017, the director of the Calar Alto Observatory and PANIC's principal investigators signed an agreement on the provisional acceptance of the PANIC instrument.

In this agreement it is explained that, except for the detectors, all the instrument packages, Optics, Mechanics, Control Software and Data Processing Software, have fulfilled their requirements and have demonstrated their good functioning.
The detectors, however, present a major and unexpected non-conformance that makes their replacement necessary.

First PANIC results: A startburst reveals the formation mechanism of massive stars

jmiguel — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 08:41:39 +0000

An outburst from a forming massive star, due to the sudden intake of material from its accretion disk, has been detected for the very first time.

First Light

jmiguel — Fri, 29 May 2015 08:17:11 +0000

"First Light" for PANIC at Calar Alto Observatory

AIV in good progress

jmiguel — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 11:51:48 +0000

PANIC Assembly, integration and verification (AIV) taking place at Heidelberg makes progress as is shown in next photos:

Laboratory performance tests

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:20:22 +0000

Once all hardware has been manufactured, the instrument is currently assembled and tested in laboratory at MPIA. In this contribution presented in the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012 Conference we describe results of some tests.

First software integration tests

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:18:40 +0000

On end November 2011, the first software integration tests were done at MPIA lab with the whole control hardware running. And at the same time, the readout optimization and characterization of the detector was done.

No serious problems were found in this first software integration, but some interesting features were pointed out to be improved.