Opihi
NASA InfraRed Telescope Facility(IRTF), Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii

Introduction

Opihi is a 17" finderscope for the IRTF, mounted on the IRTF telescope. Opihi will have a wide 0.5 degree square field of view and be able to reach 20th magnitude in about 1 minute. Opihi's main goal is to recover newly discovered asteroids, where uncertainty in the ephemeris is much larger than the FOV of MORIS/SpeX, and the uncertainty in the non-sidereal rates makes guiding difficult. Opihi will enable us to find the target, update the ephemeris, and point MORIS/SpeX to the target.

When not being used to find asteroids, Opihi will run autonomously to monitor the sky tranparency, and provide live images of the sky to the IRTF observer. Since the wavelength coverage of SpeX and Opihi overlap at i-band, Opihi images can be used to flux calibrate SpeX spectra, provided that the target is bright enough at i-band and SpeX is being used in prism or SXD modes.

Opihi is for night time use only. The aperture cover will be kept closed during daylight hours to avoid damage to the system.

Opihi consists of:

Measured Specs

Opihi Modes

Project Status


Contact Mike Connelley for further information and assistance.