Michelle

Abstract

Although UKIRT had been designed as an infrared telescope, and in its early days had operated a number of mid-infrared instruments including UKT7, UKT8, IRASFU, and CGS3, in later years it proved remarkably difficult to equip it with array based instruments operating in the 10 and 20 μm wavelength regions. The first use of a mid-infrared array camera was one developed at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center by Daniel Gezari and which was brought to UKIRT in July 1989 for polarimetric observations of the Galactic centre. At ROE early attempts to produce a thermal infrared array instrument focussed on collaboration with Reinhard Genzel’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching. After some preliminary discussions Terry Lee and a few others met with the Germans in the Heathrow Business Centre in early 1989 to set up a joint ROE/MPE project to build a low-cost instrument that would provide experience of operating array instruments in the thermal infrared regime. It was called MIRACLE, the Mid IR Camera of Least Effort.