The Near Infrared Camera on the W.M. Keck Telescope

Abstract

The near infrared camera (NIRC) was used for a science demonstration run on the Keck telescope during 16–24 March 1993. The camera used a 256 x 256 InSb array manufactured by Santa Barbara Research Corporation. Observations were obtained using narrowband and broad band filters from 1 to 2.4 microns, and grisms with a spectral resolution of 0.6 percent in the J, H and K atmospheric windows. The instrument was fully background limited over the entire wavelength range. The sky background was quite low, reaching 14.3 mag/square arc sec in the broadband K _s filter. The image quality of the camera + telescope was excellent, being seeing limited in the range 0.5″-0.9″.

The science demonstration observations of the NIRC on the Keck Telescope included observations of the most distant galaxy known, 4C41.17 at a redshift z = 3.8 and the most luminous object known, the IRAS source FSC10214+4724 at a redshift z = 2.29. Observations of the radio galaxy address the problem of the alignment effect in high redshift radio galaxies as well as the environments of such systems. FSC10214+4724 appears to be a merging galaxy that is at least 5 × 10⁸ years old.