News
The INTEGRAL Mission
INTEGRAL was selected in 1993 as the second medium-size ESA mission (M-2). The INTEGRAL payload includes:
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The Gamma-ray spectrometer SPI
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The imager IBIS
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The X-ray monitor JEM-X
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And the optical monitoring camera OMC
LAEFF/INTA is the institute holding the principal responsibility for the OMC. |  |
To retrieve information and documentation about the OMC please click here. |
INTA participated also in the development of the coded masks for the high-energy instruments, IBIS, SPI and JEM-X, being responsible of the qualification and tests programme. |
More information about the INTEGRAL project and links to the involved institutes can be found on the ESTEC WWW server.
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The Optical Monitoring Camera - OMC
The selected payload model for INTEGRAL project includes an optical camera to extend the wavelength coverage of the main Gamma-ray instruments, which was built by a consortium of Spanish, Irish, Belgian and British scientists. |
The OMC consists of a CCD camera unit connected to a single electronics unit. The camera unit is based on a large format CCD (2048x1024 pixels) working in frame transfer mode (1024x1024 image area) to avoid the need for a mechanical shutter (frame transfer time around 0.2~ms). The CCD head is cooled by means of a passive radiator to an operational temperature of -80 C. An optical baffle affords the necessary reduction of scattered sunlight. A once-only deployable cover protected the optics from contamination during ground operations and early operations in orbit. The optics is based on a refractive system with entrance pupil of 50~mm and a field of view of 5.0x5.0 degrees. In this way source confusion in the Galactic plane is minimized for stars brighter than magnitude 18.5, while keeping a rather large field of view. Observations are performed through a V filter.
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The OMC is observing the optical emission from the prime targets of the two INTEGRAL Gamma-ray instruments with the support of the X-ray monitor. OMC offers the first opportunity to make long observations in the optical band simultaneously with those at X-rays and Gamma-rays. This capability provides invaluable diagnostic information on the nature and the physics of the sources over a broad wavelength range. Multiband observations are particularly important in high-energy astrophysics where variability is typically rapid. The wide band observing opportunity offered by INTEGRAL is of unique importance in providing for the first time simultaneous observations over seven orders of magnitude in photon energy for some of the most energetic objects in the Universe, including Active Galactic Nuclei, supernova explosions, different kinds of active binary systems and Gamma-Ray-Bursts. |
The project management is responsibility of INTA-LAEFF. Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory , together with Dublin Institute for Advanced Sciences, were responsible for the development of the CCD chip and readout electronics. University College of Dublin is in charge of the development of the scientific software installed at the Integral Science Data Centre. The Centre Spatial de Liège developed the optical system and the baffle. INTA-LAEFF taked care of the power supply unit, the mechanical structure, the thermal control subsystem and the development of the onboard application software. Finally, Astronomical Institute Ondrejov is collaborating in some software activities (ISOC routines, simulators, test images,...). |
Responsible at LAEFF/INTA: J. Miguel Mas-Hesse
