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  • Patricio Schurter

Patricio
Schurter

Instrument Development & Engineering

Patricio Schurter is a dedicated mechanical engineer with extensive experience in the development of telescope instrumentation and upgrade projects. He contributed significantly to the Blanco and SOAR telescopes in Chile and spent seven years working in the Wavefront Sensing Group at the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). Outside of his professional achievements, he enjoys spending time with his family, as well as pursuing hobbies like music, biking, flying radio-controlled aircraft, and repairing things.

Patricio Schurter

Mechanical Engineer
Pasadena, CA

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Email: pschurter@carnegiescience.edu    

Abstract
The Dark Energy Camera is a new imager with a 2 degrees.2 diameter field of view mounted at the prime focus of the Victor M. Blanco 4 m telescope on Cerro Tololo near La Serena, Chile. The camera was designed and constructed by the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration. and meets or exceeds the stringent requirements designed for the wide-field and supernova surveys for which the collaboration uses it. The camera consists of a five-element optical corrector, seven filters, a shutter with a 60 cm aperture, and a charge-coupled device (CCD) focal plane of 250 mu m thick fully depleted CCDs cooled inside a vacuum Dewar. The 570 megapixel focal plane comprises 62 2k x 4k CCDs for imaging and 12 2k x 2k CCDs for guiding and focus. The CCDs have 15 mu m x 15 mu m pixels with a plate scale of 0 ''.263 pixel(-1). A hexapod system provides state-of-the-art focus and alignment capability. The camera is read out in 20 s with 6-9 electron. readout noise. This paper provides a technical description of the camera's engineering, construction, installation, and current status.
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