JPCam, installed last June at the Cassegrain focus of the 2.5m Javalambre Survey Telescope (JST250) of the Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory (OAJ), successfully achieved technical first light on the night of June 29, obtaining its first images of the sky.

After the first light, the Pathfinder images reach 0.4” PSF resolutions in its first days of operation.

The J-PAS Pathfinder camera of the Javalambre Survey Telescope (JST250) received its first light on the night of 20th February, obtaining succesfully an image of the open cluster NGC1960. After the commissioning of the instrument, the Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructure (ICTS, in their Spanish initials) Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre is working at full capacity, operating routinely the two main telescopes with first-level scientific instrumentation.

After passing the verification tests, the cryogenic camera is being prepared to be delivered at CEFCA next August.

The OAJ already keeps the actuator system of JPCam in its clean room. After its arrival in mid January, the engineering team has carried out the integration of the system at the observatory in order to start with the verification and fine-tune processes, first in the clean room and, finally, in the JST250 telescope.

In late September, responsible members of CEFCA and the J-PAS collaboration visited e2v headquarters to see, first hand, the progress made on the set up of the cryogenic camera of JPCam, the scientific instrument designed by CEFCA and Brazil for the JST250 telescope.

With the successful achievement of this important milestone, e2v has demonstrated that the focal plane is well within the very strict JPCam requirements. The JPCam engineering focal plane has been successfully integrated at e2v (Chelmsford, UK). JPCam, the main scientific instrument of the JST250 telescope, is a 1.2 Gpixel camera designed to perform the J-PAS survey.

This week, the Institute of Astronomy , Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo and the Spanish company NTE-Sener signed the contract of the support structure and the actuator system of the JPCam.

In early December, and after an international process of peer review, Brazil’s Observatório Nacional, a partner institution in the Javalambre Physics of the Accelerated Universe Astrophysical Survey collaboration (J-PAS), and British company E2V signed a contract to provide the cryogenic camera system for the JST250 telescope of the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre.