High Temporal Resolution Multi-Mode Panoramic Photospectropolarimeter

Abstract

Abstract: The paper describes a new stage in the development of the hardware-software complex of the MANIA experiment to search for and study the brightness variability of astrophysical objects with a temporal resolution of 10-6S s. The panoramic photospectropolarimeter uses the remotely mounted optical units—the color separation modules which allow one to carry out observations in five modes: the most transparent, multi-band, photo-polarimetric, spectroscopic, and spectro-polarimetric. Two photodetectors (PDs) based on position sensitive detectors (PSDs) with the S-20 and GaAs cathodes, the multiplication of photocurrents with microchannel plates (MCPs), and detection using collectors with the number of elements from 4 up to 16 and an EMCCD camera allow one to detect light fluxes from objects and reference stars in a field of view of up to 1 in several color bands in the low resolution spectroscopic mode, and at the same time to measure the linear polarization in three Stokes parameters. The detection system accumulates the observed data: the digitized photocount fluxes from both PDs with a temporal resolution of 1μswhile the EMCCD camera accumulates video sequences with a subsecond resolution simultaneously with the reception of ultraviolet quanta with a microsecond resolution on a single PD. We present some research results obtained in observations with the 6-m SAO RAS telescope.