Hyper Suprime-Cam

Abstract

Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is an 870 Mega pixel prime focus camera for the 8.2 m Subaru telescope. The wide field corrector delivers sharp image of 0.25 arc-sec FWHM in r-band over the entire 1.5 degree (in diameter) field of view. The collimation of the camera with respect to the optical axis of the primary mirror is realized by hexapod actuators whose mechanical accuracy is few microns. As a result, we expect to have seeing limited image most of the time. Expected median seeing is 0.67 arc-sec FWHM in i-band. The sensor is a p-ch fully depleted CCD of 200 micron thickness (2048 x 4096 15 μm square pixel) and we employ 116 of them to pave the 50 cm focal plane. Minimum interval between exposures is roughly 30 seconds including reading out arrays, transferring data to the control computer and saving them to the hard drive. HSC uniquely features the combination of large primary mirror, wide field of view, sharp image and high sensitivity especially in red. This enables accurate shape measurement of faint galaxies which is critical for planned weak lensing survey to probe the nature of dark energy. The system is being assembled now and will see the first light in August 2012.