MAIA, a three-channel imager for asteroseismology: instrument design^⋆

¹ Institute of Astronomy, Department of Physics and Astronomy, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
e-mail: gert.raskin@ster.kuleuven.be
² Mercator Telescope, Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, 38700 Santa Cruz, La Palma, Spain
³ RHEA, European Space Agency – ESTEC, Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, The Netherlands
⁴ Department of Astrophysics, IMAPP, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Received: 10 August 2013
Accepted: 8 October 2013

Abstract

MAIA, an acronym for Mercator Advanced Imager for Asteroseismology, is a three-channel instrument that targets fast-cadence three-colour photometry, installed at the 1.2-m Mercator telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain). This instrument observes a 9.4 × 14.1 arcmin² field-of-view simultaneously in three wavelength bands on three large frame-transfer CCDs. These detectors were developed for ESA’s cancelled Eddington space mission and were offered on permanent loan to the Institute of Astronomy (KU Leuven, Belgium). MAIA uses its own ugr photometric system that is a crude approximation of the SDSS system. The instrument is designed to perform multi-colour observations for asteroseismology, with specific emphasis on subdwarf and white dwarf single and binary stars. We describe the design of the instrument, discuss key components, and report on its performance and first results.