NESSI

Publications

• Abstract announcing NESSI at the Jan 2010 AAS Meeting in Washington, DC.
• Short article about our instrument from April 2010 Astrobiology Conference in League City, TX.
• Abstract (and SPIE article for subscribers) about our optical design from the June 2010 SPIE Meeting in San Diego, CA.
• SPIE presentations are here (2012 SPIE in Amsterdam) NESSI operations (306) and NESSI optomechanics (364).

Press Releases

• Initial Announcement, August 3, 2009
• Update, February 9, 2010

Design Documents

• Schematic of NESSI's layout. From L to R in the picture you see a zemax file of: the 2.4m MRO telescope, the K-mirror derotator, a dichroic which reflects the IR light down to the spectrograph and transmits the optical light to the guide camera. The inset blow-up is of the K-mirror, dichroic and cryogenic spectrograph.
• Fernando G. Santoro et al., Mechanical design of NESSI: New Mexico Tech extrasolar spectroscopic survey instrument. Proc. SPIE 8446, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV, 84469G (September 24, 2012); doi:10.1117/12.926282.

Capability	Description	Wavelengths	Notes
Multi-object Masks	12' FOV, 0.5" pixels	1.0-2.4 μm	7 cold masks + open
Low-Resolution Spectra	R~200	1.0-2.4 μm (J, H & K)	Teledyne H2RG science detector
Moderate-Resolution Spectra	R~1100	1.0-2.4 μm (J, H or K)	Teledyne H2RG science detector
Autoguiding	Optical/Red, 0.25" pixels	0.5-0.9 μm, 4' FOV	E2V CCD47-10
Narrow-line Imaging	Full-Field (12' FOV) imaging	13 filters	7 filter slots in one wheel, 3 in other
K-Mirror	Selectable angles	0.5-2.4 μm	0.3" tracking stability specification
Wide-band single object photometry	Magnitude limits TBD	J, H or K

NESSI salient specifications for the curious astronomer. Note that NESSI also has imaging modes for narrow-band imaging over the 12 arc minute field of view. The narrow-band filters have arrived in time for our first light.

NESSI warm optics layout.

NESSI cold optics layout.

Last updated July 2013