ABU/SPIREX: The South Pole Thermal IR Experiment

Fowler, A.M., Sharp, N., Ball, W., Schinckel, A., Ashley, M., Boccas, M., Storey, J., DePoy, D., Martini, P., Harper, A., and Marks, R. 1998, Proceedings of the SPIE, 3354, 1170

ABU is a NOAO IR imaging camera designed for evaluating the performance of the 1024x1024 Aladdin InSb array. For this experiment, it was outfitted with five filters (see Figure 9) in the 3-5 micron range to exploit the low water vapor and lower air temperatures at the South Pole. At the South Pole it was integrated with the CARA SPIREX (South Pole Infrared Explorer) telescope. Figure 1 is a picture of the telescope showing the environmental box (the white box by the author), which protected ABU and its electronics from ambient environmental conditions.