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Date Announced: 21 Feb 2019
Four-Color MuSCAT2 Instrument Seeks Earth-like Planets in Collaboration with NASA’s TESS
Februay 21, 2019 – New Jersey, USA – Teledyne Princeton Instruments, a world-renowned manufacturer of scientific imaging and spectroscopy equipment, is pleased to recognize the work of the international team that developed the second-generation Multicolor Simultaneous Camera (MuSCAT2) for the 1.52 meter Telescopio Carlos Sánchez at the Teide Observatory, Canaries, Spain. Japanese researchers from the Astrobiology Center and the University of Tokyo along with Spanish researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias developed the advanced four-color imaging instrument for studying atmospheres of transiting exoplanets.
According to the National Institutes of Natural Sciences’ Astrobiology Center, MuSCAT2 is now aiming to find and confirm a large number of transiting exoplanets, including Earth-like habitable planets orbiting stars near the Sun, in collaboration with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched in April 2018.
“We’re very excited that the MuSCAT2 developers chose our PIXIS back-illuminated CCD cameras, including our patented eXcelon® sensor technology providing enhanced sensitivity, for their observations,” comments Michael Melle, imaging product manager at Princeton Instruments. “These highperformance PIXIS detectors are among the most recent Princeton Instruments cameras, spectrographs, and optics to be installed at observatories around the world.”
First-light commissioning of MuSCAT2 was made on August 24 (the night of August 23), 2017 UT. Subsequently, commissioning observations were conducted through 2017 and early 2018. The instrument started science operations in January 2018, with more than 250 telescope nights per year. The team will use MuSCAT2 in collaboration with NASA’s TESS more than 162 nights per year until at least 2022.
About Teledyne Princeton Instruments
Teledyne Princeton Instruments is part of the Teledyne Imaging group and a world leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance CCD, ICCD, EMCCD, emICCD, InGaAs, and back-illuminated sCMOS cameras; high-throughput spectrographs; complete spectroscopy systems; and optics-based solutions for the scientific research, industrial imaging, and OEM communities. We take pride in partnering with our customers to solve their most challenging problems in unique, innovative ways. Princeton Instruments is a registered ISO 9001:2015 company. For more information on all Princeton Instruments products, please visit www.princetoninstruments.com.
About Teledyne Imaging
Teledyne Imaging is a group of leading-edge companies aligned under the Teledyne umbrella. Teledyne Imaging forms an unrivalled collective of expertise across the spectrum and decades of experience. Individually, each company offers best-in-class solutions. Together, they combine and leverage each other’s strengths to provide the deepest, widest imaging and related technology portfolio in the world. From aerospace through industrial inspection, radiography and radiotherapy, geospatial surveying, and advanced MEMS and semiconductor solutions, Teledyne Imaging offers world-wide customer support and the technical expertise to handle the toughest tasks. Their tools, technologies, and vision solutions are built to deliver to their customers a unique and competitive advantage.
*Image courtesy of The University of Tokyo, Japan Science & Technology Agency, Astrobiology Center, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.
E-mail: dfbaum@princetoninstruments.com
Web Site: https://www.princetoninstruments.com/
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