The Kottamia Faint Imaging Spectro-Polarimeter (KFISP) has been recently developed, commissioned and mounted to the Cassegrain focus of the 1.88m telescope at Kottamia astronomical observatory, Egypt. The KFISP instrument demagnified the Kottamia 1.88m telescope Cassegrain focus from a f/18 with a plate scale 6.09"/mm to f/6.14 with a plate scale of 17.8"/mm. A liquid Nitrogen cooled CCD camera with a 2048×2048 pixels and 13.5-micron square pixel size is fixed to the KFISP through an integrated camera lens. In this paper we describe the camera system, performance, and its software control. As well, KFISP motion control and its software will be introduced. In addition, detailed description of the instrument performance and the results obtained from its operation will be presented.
We describe the Kottamia Faint Imaging Spectro-Polarimeter (KFISP) that has been recently developed and designed to be mounted to the Cassegrain focus of the 1.88m telescope at Kottamia Astronomical Observatory (KAO), Egypt. The optical design of KFISP is developed such that it can be used in various modes of operation. These are: direct imaging, spectroscopic (low and medium resolution), polarimetric imaging, and spectro-polarimetric. The KFISP is an all-refractive design to meet the polarimetric requirements and includes a focal reducer with a corrector section, collimator section, parallel beam section (containing various imaging components), and camera section. The corrector section gives an unvignetted Field-of-View (FoV) of 8ʹ × 8ʹ and the collimator section has a focal length of 305 mm and matches the focal ratio of the input beam. The parallel beam section is 200 mm long and near the middle of it there is an image of the telescope pupil. The camera section includes 5 elements and has a focal length of 154.51 mm which gives an instrument effective final focal ratio of f/6.14 (acting as a telescope focal reducer of 1:2 ratio). The KFISP contains an internal calibration system which hosts the calibration light injection system, an integrating sphere equipped with the required calibration light sources. The opto-mechanical parts of KFISP contain double-layered carbon fiber strut structure and comprises its subsystems of slit and guider assemblies, filter wheel drawer, grism wheel drawer, polarimetric components cubical box, and CCD camera which is integrated with camera optics. The KFISP has been fully commissioned, mounted and is being tested in all modes of operation. In this paper we introduce the ambitious scientific goals, the optical setups of KFISP, its opto-mechanical implementation and the performance analysis of the instrument. In addition, we will present sample of the first light observations obtained from the instrument.
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