The 1.1 mm continuum camera, AzTEC, installed in the scientific-instruments room of the LMT.

AzTEC

AzTEC, a 144-pixel millimeter-wavelength camera that operated at 1.1mm, was the first-light and Early Science continuum instrument of the LMT from 2011 to 2018. It was developed at UMass Amherst in collaboration with the BOLOCAM instrument team. The detector array was cooled to ~250 mK via a three-stage, closed-cycle 3He refrigerator. Radiation was coupled to Si-Ni “spider-web” bolometers, arranged in a close-packed hexagonal pattern, with an array of conical feedhorns separated by 1.4 f λ. Scanning of the telescope or movements of the secondary mirror provided fully-sampled images. Technical details about the instrument can be found in Wilson et al. (2008).

Previous to its installation on the LMT, AzTEC was successfully installed and commissioned at the JCMT in June 2005, and undertook an extensive program of guest observations on the JCMT in November & December 2005. AzTEC also operated as a guest instrument on the Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) at the ALMA site in northern Chile for two winters (2007-2008).

Publications using AzTEC data prior to its installation on the LMT and from LMT Early Science campaigns can be found in the LMT list of publications.