UCO/Lick Technical Facilities

The UCO/Lick Observatory headquarters are located on the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California. Most of the instruments for Lick Observatory (Mount Hamilton, California) and for the Keck Observatory (Mauna Kea, Hawaii) are designed and fabricated here at Technical Facilities. We are also currently involved in studies for the Thirty-Meter Telescope project. Our Instrument Shop recently did a mock-up of a TMT mirror segment.

KAST Spectrograph Upgrade
The Lick Shops will be performing the first major servicing of this instrument since it was delivered to the Mountain in the early 1990's. We will thoroughly clean it; service all the mechanical stages; clean, and where necessary, re-coat the optics; and install a new motor control system. The operation of the stages will be thoroughly tested in Santa Cruz before returning the instrument to Mt. Hamilton in early March 2009.

Current Projects:

APF - Automated Planet Finder (this site is restricted)
The discovery of Jupiter-like planets orbiting nearby stars began at Lick Observatory in 1995. These discoveries have spawned a race for the detection of lower mass planets more like our Earth. We propose to dramatically improve the world-renowned planet search at Lick Observatory by constructing the first dedicated Automated Planet Finder. This facility will consist of a 2.5-meter class automated telescope and enclosure, and a high-resolution spectrograph. It will permit detection of low-mass, Earth-like planets by targeting nearby stars and observing them every night for months.The dome is complete and the telescope will be installed in early 2007. To see the site, click here.
Principal Investigator: Steve Vogt

Lick Observatory 12-inch Telescope Refurbishing Project

The Lick Instrument and Optics Shops are engaged in efforts to refurbish the historic 12" refracting telescope. Installed in the dome which now houses the 40" Nickel telescope, the telescope utilized best-of-class optics made by famed lensmaker Alvan Clark. He considered the objective lens he made for the telescope to be one of the best he ever made. He and his sons went on the make the lenses for the 36" refractor, the largest in the world at that time.

First used by Lick astronomers to observe Mercury's transit of the Sun on November 7, 1881, the 12" was the main telescope on Mt. Hamilton as the great 36" refractor and its dome were being built. It has gone unused for many years, and it will now be restored as an important part of Lick Observatory's history.

Commissioned Projects:

LRIS Upgrade
The goal of this project was to replace the existing CCD in the red side of LRIS with a 2 x 1 mosaic of 2k x 4k fully-depleted LBNL CCDs to increase the sensitivity of the red channel of the instrument and eliminate fringing. Other improvements include a modest increase in spatial and spectral coverage, improved image uniformity due to a flatter detector, and increased reliability for the detector readout electronics.

First light achieved on June 7, 2009: M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy.

Principal Investigatos: Constance Rockosi, Mike Bolte

Cassegrain ADC
The Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrograph on Keck-1 provides imaging and spectroscopy from the ultraviolet (3100A) to near-infrared (1 micron). Unfortunately, atmospheric refraction, acting much like a prism, results in a displacement of an incoming beam that depends on wavelength and zenith distance. This atmospheric dispersion, even at modest zenith angles above 60 degrees, can seriously reduce slit throughput if the position angle of the slit is not perpendicular to the horizon. To correct for this problem, an Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC) has been built. First light was achieved on January 27, 2007, and commissioning completed in March 2007.
Principal Investigator: Joe Miller

HIRES - High Resolution Spectrograph Dewar Upgrade on Keck I: The new system replaced a single CCD using 24 mm pixels with a mosaic of three CCDs, using 15 mm pixels each. Consequently, this upgrade provides not only a 130% increase in area of the CCD detectors, but also significantly increases the resolution of the pictures obtained. First light for the new detectors was August 2004.
Principal Investigator - Steve Vogt

TV Guide Camera - UCO/Lick Observatory has produced new field acquisition and telescoping guiding cameras to replace the existing guiders on Mt. Hamilton.

DEIMOS - DEep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph
This instrument is a two-beam spectrograph that has been installed on the right Nasmyth platform of Keck-II. Presently only one beam is operable. First light was June 2002.
Principal Investigator - Sandra Faber

ESI - Echellette Spectrograph and Imager
This spectrograph is a Cassegrain instrument that is being used on Keck-II. First light was achieved in August 1999.
Principal Investigator - Joe Miller
Co-Principal Investigators - Michael Bolte, Raja Guhathakurta, Harland Epps, Dennis Zaritsky

HIRES - High Resolution Spectrograph
The high resolution spectrograph is currently the workhorse instrument on Keck-I. First light was successfully achieved in June of 1993.
Principal Investigator - Steve Vogt

This page is currently maintained by Deb Culmer, dculmer at ucolick dot org