NaCo
Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System (NAOS)
Near-Infrared Imager and Spectrograph (CONICA)

Summary

NaCo NaCo sets out for NAOS-CONICA. It is installed at the Nasmyth B focus of UT4. It provides adaptive optics assisted imaging, imaging polarimetry, coronography and spectroscopy, in the 1-5 microns range.

The adaptive optics system, NAOS, is equipped with both visible and infrared wavefront sensors. It contains 5 dichroics which split the light from the telescope between CONICA and one of the NAOS wavefront sensors.
CONICA is the infrared camera and spectrometer attached to NAOS and is equipped with an Aladdin 1024x1024 pixel InSb array detector. It contains several wheels carrying masks/slits (including focal plane coronographic masks), filters, polarizing elements, grisms and several cameras allowing diffraction limited sampling across the full wavelength range. CONICA is not intented to be operated without NAOS.

Publications based on data obtained with the NACO instrument should quote the following reference papers: Lenzen, R. et al. 2003, SPIE 4841, 944 and Rousset, G. et al. 2003, SPIE 4839, 140.

Contact Information

  • Questions related to service mode observations and proposal preparation should be addressed to the User Support Department.
  • Questions related to visitor mode observations should be addressed to Paranal Science Operations
  • Questions related to NaCo should be addressed to the NaCo account
  • Please send us your comments, suggestions and report errors and inaccurate statements in the web pages and manuals.

Content of these pages

The following items are available on all the NaCo pages, using the bar on the left.

  • Overview: a short description of the instrument
  • News: list of changes affecting the instrument and/or its pages.
  • Instrument Description: all the important parameters of the instrument.
  • Manuals: links to all the documents related to NaCo.
  • Tools: a collection of useful tools and informations for preparing and analyzing the NaCo observations.
  • Instrument Operations Team
  • Visitor Instructions: Instrument specific instructions for Visiting Astronomers