Iqueye, a single photon-counting photometer applied to the ESO new technology telescope
2 OAR - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma
3 Italian Space Agency
4 ICFO - Institute of Photonic, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
5 OACT - INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania
6 OAC - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari
7 CNR-INFM Luxor
8 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
9 Pôle Planétologie du LESIA
10 OAPD - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 873258
- IdHAL : soniafornasier
- ORCID : 0000-0001-7678-3310
- IdRef : 073393266
Résumé
Context: A new extremely high speed photon-counting photometer, Iqueye, has been installed and tested at the New Technology Telescope, in La Silla.
Aims: This instrument is the second prototype of a ``quantum'' photometer being developed for future Extremely Large Telescopes of 30-50 m aperture.
Methods: Iqueye divides the telescope aperture into four portions, each feeding a single photon avalanche diode. The counts from the four channels are collected by a time-to-digital converter board, where each photon is appropriately time-tagged. Owing to a rubidium oscillator and a GPS receiver, an absolute rms timing accuracy better than 0.5 ns during one-hour observations is achieved. The system can sustain a count rate of up to 8 MHz uninterruptedly for an entire night of observation.
Results: During five nights of observations, the system performed smoothly, and the observations of optical pulsar calibration targets provided excellent results.