MASCARA: opto-mechanical design and integration

Julien F.P. Sproncka , Anna-Léa Lesagea , Remko Stuika , Felix Bettonvila,b and Ignas A.G.
Snellena
a Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 2, 2333 CA, Leiden, The Netherlands;
b NOVA Optical Infrared Instrumentation Group, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT
MASCARA, the Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA, consists of several fully-automated stations. Its goal is to find
exoplanets transiting the brightest stars, in the mV = 4 to 8 magnitude range. Each station contains five wide-
angle cameras monitoring the near-entire sky at each location. The five cameras are located in a temperature-
controlled enclosure and look at the sky through five windows. A housing with a moving roof protects MASCARA
from the environment. Here, we present the opto-mechanical design of the first MASCARA station.
Keywords: Instrumentation, Exoplanet, Transit, Survey

1. INTRODUCTION
MASCARA, the Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA,1–3 consists of several fully-automated stations distributed across
the globe. Its goal is to find exoplanets transiting the brightest stars, in the mV = 4 to 8 magnitude range,
currently probed neither by space- nor by ground-based surveys. The nearby transiting planet systems that
MASCARA is expected to discover will be key targets for future detailed planet atmosphere observations. Each
station contains five wide-angle cameras monitoring the near-entire sky at each location. Once fully deployed,
MASCARA will provide a nearly continuous coverage of the dark sky, down to magnitude 8, at sub-minute
cadence.
The first MASCARA station will be located on La Palma, Spain. It is compact and has been designed to
minimize moving components and provide maximum reliability of the station. Five wide-angle cameras constantly
stare at the same field of view. Each camera consists of a standard photographic Canon 24mm f/1.4 lens fitted
on an 11MPix full-frame CCD camera from Atik and has a field of view of 53x74 degrees. One camera is pointing
at zenith while the four others are pointing in each cardinal direction with a zenith angle of 41 degrees. This
allows us to monitor the near-entire local sky from zenith down to airmass 2 while having some significant overlap
between the cameras. In case of one camera failure, MASCARA can be reconfigured to still cover a large field
of view although removing most of the overlap between cameras.
The cameras are in an enclosed box with five windows to protect the cameras from dust and to ease the
maintenance - since the external windows are cheap and can be cleaned easily while the lenses need special care.
In order to minimize focal length and pointing changes, the temperature inside the camera enclosure is controlled
in a closed loop using liquid-cooled Peltier elements and an external heat exchanger. The camera enclosure and
the cameras are mounted on top of a simple structure made of Aluminum profiles, inside which the control and
data-taking computers sit. A similar structure, covered by insulating panels, holds a housing around the entire
station to protect MASCARA from rain, snow, wind, dust and other environmental factors. Using a set of gears
and motors, the roof of the housing automatically opens and closes at the beginning and end of every night,
weather permitting.
In this paper, we present the opto-mechanical design of the first MASCARA station.
E-mail: julspronck@gmail.com

Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V, edited by

Suzanne K. Ramsay, Ian S. McLean, Hideki Takami, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9147,
914756 · © 2014 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/14/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2056151

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 2. REQUIREMENTS
MASCARA is an all-sky survey designed to do aperture photometry on all stars in the mV = 4 to 8 magnitude
range. The requirements are:

• Faintest star to observe: mV = 8 (Goal: mV = 9);

• Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) = 100 for mV = 8 per hour (Goal: SNR = 100 for mV = 9 per hour);
• Brightest star to observe: mV = 4;
• Wavelength range: visible.

In addition, each station should meet these requirements down to airmass 2-3. The stations should be
remotely controlled and should require as little maintenance as possible during their nominal lifetime. Finally,
we will also try to minimize costs whenever possible.

• Automatic, low maintenance;

• Clear view up to airmass = 2 (Goal: airmass = 3);
• Low cost;

• Lifetime 4 years (Goal: 5 years).

3. OPTICAL DESIGN
MASCARA is optically simple. We need a certain number of cameras (lenses + detectors) looking at the entire
sky at all times. In this section, we will present the trade-offs that we have made in order to choose the lenses
and the detectors as well as their configuration.

3.1 Detectors
Since there is no tracking, we need to keep the exposures short to avoid stars to trail over the detector. On the
other hand, the longer the exposure, the less influence the read-out noise will have on our data. We also need to
make sure that the brightest stars in our targets will not saturate. Keeping this in mind, we chose the exposure
times to be about 6 seconds.
On a typical clear 10-hour night, we will take on the order of 6000 images per camera. After only twenty
nights, each camera will have taken over 100, 000 exposures. This number is higher than the typical lifetime of
standard mechanical shutters. We therefore cannot use cameras with a mechanical shutter, which precludes the
use of a dSLR camera. To avoid mechanical shutters, we need an interline CCD.
In order to reach the required SNR, the camera should be able to take continuous exposures, i.e. it should
be able to take an exposure while reading out. This also imposes the read-out time to be less than the exposure
time (≈ 6 seconds).
Since each detector will image a wide field of view, the likelihood for the moon to be in the field is high. This
means that the detector needs a good anti-blooming protection if we do not want to throw away all the frames
that includes the moon.
Given these constraints, we selected the Atik 11000 (see Table 1).

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 Sensor type CCD - Kodak KAI 11002
Sensor size 37.25 mm x 25.7 mm
Resolution 4008 x 2672 pixels
Pixel size 9 x 9 µm
Readout Noise 15 e- RMS
Dark current 0.03 e-/s at -20 degrees
Well depth 60,000 e-
Anti-blooming > 1000 x
Quantum efficiency 50%
Cooling Two stage Peltier with ∆T = −38◦ C
Table 1. Specifications of the Atik 11000 detector

3.2 Lenses
For a given sky coverage Asky (in square degrees), the required number of cameras is approximately given by

Asky π 2 f 2
Ncam = ,
Adet 1802

where f is the focal length of the lens and Adet is the physical area of the detector (860mm2 in the case of a
24 × 36mm detector). Since the cost of a station is directly driven by the number of cameras, we have if we
assume for a rough estimate that all lenses cost the same,

Cost ∝ f 2 .

In order to choose the optimal lenses, we need to calculate the SNR as a function of focal length. The number
of photons reaching the detector is proportional to the collecting area,

f2
N (f ) ∝ 2 ,
F#

where f and F# are the focal length and the focal ratio of the lens.
At the faint end of the magnitude range, the dominating sources of noise are the sky background, the photon
noise and, to a much lesser extent, the read-out noise. The background noise is independent of focal length
because the increase of collecting area is compensated by the decrease of the angular size of the pixels on sky.
The read-out noise is also independent of focal length, the SNR is therefore of the form

C1 f 2
SNR(f ) = p ,
C1 f 2 + C2

where C1 and C2 are constants. Figure 1 depicts the SNR as a function of focal length. In this simulation, we
used the following parameters: a magnitude mV = 8, a sky surface brightness of 17 mag/arcsec2 , a read-out
noise of 15 electrons and an photometric aperture of 3 pixels in radius. We see that the focal length should be
at least 20 mm to reach the required SNR per hour. SNR will increase with focal length. However, so will the
cost and the complexity of the system.
In order to maximize the SNR while keeping the costs low and after testing a few lenses, we chose the Canon
24mm F/1.4 USM L II. With a focal length of 24 mm, we need 5 cameras for a (nearly) complete coverage down
to airmass 2 (see Figure 2). Four cameras will be pointing towards North, East, South, and West with a zenith
angle of 41 degrees, while the fifth camera will point towards zenith. This configuration enables a good (but
partial) coverage down to airmass 3 while yielding an overlap of 18% between all the cameras. A substantial
overlap is helpful for data continuity and to mitigate possible problems in the data (such as moon ghosts for
example).

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 10 20 30 40 50
Focal length (in mm)

Figure 1. SNR as function of focal length for F/2.8 and F/1.4.

.. .......
................

50

Airmass = 2
Airmass = 3
Camera C
-50 Camera W
Camera E
Camera N
Camera S
-150 -100 -50 0 50 100 150
Hour angle (in degrees)

Figure 2. Configuration of the five cameras on-sky for the first MASCARA station on La Palma (latitude of 30◦ N ).

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 Given the focal length of the lens, we chose the exposure time to be 6.4 seconds, which causes, in the worst
case, the stars to trail over 1.2 pixels. The exposure time was also chosen in such a way that we expose at fixed
sidereal times.
With a 24mm F/1.4 lens, we calculate that the required SNR of 100 would still be achieved if the diameter
of the photometric aperture was 10 pixels and if the transmission was decreased by two stops due to vignetting.
This sets a requirement in terms of PSF size and vignetting.
In Figure 3, we see the measured PSF and vignetting as a function of position on the detector for the
chosen lens opened at F/1.4. We see that the PSF degrades but remains acceptable (within a 10-pixel aperture)
throughout the field. The vignetting is rather consequent in the corners of the CCD with a throughput three
stops lower than in the center. However, 92% of the detector has a vignetting lower than two stops. The required
SNR of 100 is therefore not reached in only 8% of the detector area.

i
:45d u0ue3 qZ ww q'SI

' =x A'9SOZ LOFS= = R'66LZ = 9££S = R'Z69£ =

(a)

1.2

1.0

0.8

C
vC 0.6
5

0.4

0.2

5 10 15 20 25
Distance from center (in mm)

(b)
Figure 3. (a) Measured PSF and (b) vignetting of the Canon 24mm F/1.4 USM L II as a function of position on the
detector.

4. MECHANICAL DESIGN
As mentioned earlier, a MASCARA station has five cameras. Four cameras are pointing to the North, the East,
the South, the West with an angle of 41 degrees with respect to the zenith. The fifth camera points to the zenith.

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 MASCARA is enclosed inside a dome to protect the cameras and the electronics from bad weather and
environmental conditions that are common at high-altitude observatories (rain, snow, dust, wind, ...). The dome
will robotically open every evening (weather permitting) and close every morning. Additionally, MASCARA will
close if the weather degrades and re-open if it improves.
To further protect the cameras from dust, rain, rodents, bugs, etc, they are placed in a camera enclosure. The
enclosure has windows for the cameras to look through. This will also ease the maintenance, as the cheap windows
can be cleaned or replaced by any untrained personnel (rather than cleaning the more expensive and delicate
lenses). Additionally, the enclosure allows for temperature control, in order to provide a stable mechanical
environment for the cameras and therefore reduce pointing and focal length variations.
The camera enclosure is mounted on top of an Aluminum structure called the inner frame. This structure
is mechanically decoupled from the dome, to avoid transmission of vibrations from the dome to the cameras.
Finally, the first MASCARA station will be bolted to a 140 × 140-cm concrete slab.

4.1 Dome
The dome is the outer enclosure that protects MASCARA from the environment (dust, wind, rain, tourists, ...).
It consist of four parts: the outer frame, the walls and corner profiles, the door and the roof.
The outer frame (see Figure 4) is the backbone of MASCARA. It is the main structure around MASCARA,
to which the door and the roof attach. It is made of standard Aluminum hollow 80 × 80 × 5-cm profiles, welded
together. Additionally, thicker Aluminum bars are welded inside the profiles at strategic locations to reinforce
the structure.
The bottom profiles will be used to bolt the dome to the concrete.

Chain
Limit
Switch

z
Door
Slewing
Drive Arms
Inner
Frame

oses for liquid cooling

Figure 4. The main components of MASCARA during integration.

For the walls, we use sandwich panels composed of a styrofoam core and a 1-mm PVC panel on each side of
the styrofoam. The panels are directly bolted onto the profiles of the outer structure. Additionally, to provide
some protection for the panels from rain, wind and dust, we use a corner profile in each corner. The corner
profiles are also directly bolted to the structural profiles.
The door and the door frame are made of folded Aluminum sheet metal and filled with neoprene for insulation.
The sheet metal design along with the use of rubber seals allows the door to be waterproof.

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 Roof structure
The roof consists of the roof frame and the roof panels. The roof overall shape is a pyramid with a flat top
(see Figure 4). The dome shape resembles the shape of the camera enclosure. The flat surfaces parallel to the
camera windows allows the roof to be illuminated for nightly calibrations (dome flat-fielding).
The roof frame is made of four standard 50 x 50 mm stainless steel profiles welded together. The panels are
2-mm sheet of stainless steel folded and welded to the roof frame and to each other.

Roof motors and mechanisms

The roof is connected to the main structure with four arms (two on each side) (see Figure 4). Each arm is a rod
connected to the roof through a rod end with a spherical roller bearing, thus creating two rotation axes. The
two axes enable the roof to be first lifted upwards (and therefore not hit the camera enclosure) before moving
sideways. Two-axes rotation also allows the roof to open and park right next to the dome, where the inside,
used for calibrations, will be protected from dust.
Note that parking the roof next to the dome sets the minimal required height of the dome. Since the dome
is 130 x 130 cm (set by the camera enclosure), the height of the outer frame should be at least 130 cm, which
gives a total height of the station of about 180 cm.
The two lower arms are connected to one common stainless steel shaft. This shaft connects the two arms in
order to provide simultaneous rotation on both sides preventing shearing of the roof and additional friction when
rotating. The shaft is held in place by two cylindrical bearings, pressed into a holder that is directly bolted onto
the main structural frame.
The two upper arms are used for the motion of the roof, they are connected via a shaft to a worm gear box,
which is connected to a motor (see Figure 4). The worm gear is a single-axis slewing drive from Kinematics
Manufacturing Inc. Those drive use hourglass worm for more power and efficiency. The gears are inherently
self-locking, which means we do not need a lock to close MASCARA.
The requirements on the gear and motor choice are driven by the forces applied to the roof, namely gravity
and the wind. We want to be able to open the dome and we need to be able to close it in case of strong wind. We
ran a small simulation on a simplistic dome model to estimate that the maximal torque achieved during opening
or closing is about 600 N.m in case of strong wind. Based on that, we selected the SE3B-62MHQ-2410-RC
slewing drive with a 24VDC brushed motor. This combination of gear and motor has a nominal output torque of
465 N.m and a maximal output torque of 899 N.m. The output speed is 1.4 RPM, which means that the dome
will open or close in about 15-20 seconds.
There is such a gearbox and motor on each side of the roof. At the end of each worm, we connect a long shaft,
which will rotate along with the worm using a key. The two shafts are coupled together with roller chains and
sprockets (see Figure 4) to make sure that both sides of the roof move at the same time, therefore preventing
shearing and additional friction during rotation.
In case one of the motor breaks, one single motor will be able to open the roof. The chains and sprockets
will transmit the power to both gearboxes, to provide simultaneous opening of both sides of the roof.
Two limit switches are used to stop the roof motion in the opened and closed position, therefore preventing
the main structure or the motors to be damaged. Additionally, we use an absolute optical encoder to know the
position of the roof at all time.

4.2 Inner frame

To decouple the cameras from the dome, we built an inner structure similar to the outer frame (see Figure 4).
We used standard Aluminum profiles (50 mm × 50 mm) welded together. Like the outer frame, the inner frame
will be directly bolted onto the concrete. The cameras and the camera enclosure are mounted on the top of the
inner frame. The space inside the inner structure is used to put the computers and other electronic equipment.

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 4.3 Camera enclosure
On top of the inner structure is attached the camera enclosure that contains the cameras (see Figure 5). The
cameras are held using simple mounts that will be bolted to a baseplate. We then cover the cameras and the
baseplate with an enclosure. The latter is made of a single folded 5-mm thick Aluminum sheet. In order for the
light to reach the cameras, five holes were made in the enclosure. These are covered by five round glass windows
125mm in diameter and 3mm thick. These windows will ease the maintenance, since it is easier and less risky
to clean the cheap windows than to clean the more expensive lenses. It is also relatively easy to replace them,
since it can be done from the outside without removing the camera enclosure.
An o-ring between the baseplate and the enclosure and o-rings around the windows seal the enclosure to
avoid moisture to form inside, therefore preventing condensation on the windows. Additionally, we will put some
desiccant to further keep the moisture out. As a preventive measure, we have small heaters around the enclosure
windows in case there is condensation.
In addition to ease the maintenance and control the humidity, this design also enables the cameras to remain
in a temperature-controlled environment, which should ensure a long-term stability of the data.
ion

Figure 5. The cameras and the inside of the camera enclosure.

4.3.1 Temperature control

In an enclosed environment, the Peltier-cooled cameras heat up the air. We measured the temperature (without
temperature control) while the cameras were cooled down and taking continuous data (see Figure 6(a)). After a
few hours, we stopped the cooling of the cameras (and the data taking) and let the temperature go back down to
ambient. An exponential fit during the heating phase shows that, without temperature control, the temperature
inside the enclosure rises up to 45C (20C above ambient temperature). Since the Peltier elements of the cameras
can only handle a ∆T = 38C, the CCD cannot be cooled down to -10C, which considerably increases the read-out
noise.
The camera enclosure therefore needs cooling. We do so using Peltier elements (see Figure 7). The cold sides
of the Peltier elements are thermally coupled to a heat sink to optimize heat transfer, while the hot sides are
coupled to liquid cooling plates. Glycol runs in the cooling plates and evacuates the heat outside with the help

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 of an external heat exchanger. Additionally, the fans of the cameras allow the air to flow inside the enclosure
and distribute the heat evenly.
Using this thermal system, we were able to control the temperature inside the enclosure (see Figure 6(b)) to
within 0.1C RMS, while all cameras were cooled down to -10C and taking continuous data.
During cold winter days, a set of relays is used to invert the polarity of the Peltier elements in order to heat
up the enclosure.

45 27.0
RMS: 0.101
Duty cycle: 74.0%
40
26.5
V V
C c
35
Measurement
` 26.0
E T = -64.9e i.z.io 't +45 v
30
E E
w
F
25.5
25

o 25.00
10 15 20 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time (in hours) Time (in hours)
(a) (b)
Figure 6. Temperature inside the camera enclosure: (a) without temperature control and (b) with temperature control. In
(a), the five cameras were cooled to -15 C and were taking data in continuous exposure mode until t = 7.4 h. Afterwards,
we stopped taking data and we stopped cooling the cameras. In (b), the five cameras were cooled to -10 C and were
taking continuous data.

Heat sink

Insulation

Baseplate

Peltiers

Liquid Cooling Plate

Heat exchanger

Figure 7. Schematic drawing of the cooling system.

5. SUMMARY
The opto-mechanical design of a MASCARA station was presented.
Optically, it is straightforward: five cameras, each composed of a Canon 24mm F/1.4 USM L II fitted on a
11MPix 36x24mm Atik CCD, will image the entire sky (down to airmass=2-3) every 6.4 seconds.
Mechanically, the cameras are placed in a thermally-controlled enclosure with five windows. We have shown
that, using Peltier elements, liquid cooling plates and an external heat exchanger, we were able to stabilize
the temperature within 0.1C RMS while the cameras were cooled down at -10C and were taking continuous
exposures.

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 The camera enclosure and baseplate are placed on top of a welded Aluminum structure.
To further protect the cameras and to protect the computers and remaining electronics, an outer Aluminum
structure and a roof surround the inner structure. The roof opens and closes in about 15 seconds with the help
of slewing drive and motors. The station fits on a 140 × 140cm concrete slab.
As of June 2014, we are currently finalizing the integration in Leiden and performing last operational tests.
We should be shipping the first MASCARA station to La Palma in the summer of 2014.

REFERENCES
[1] I. A. G. Snellen, R. Stuik, R. Navarro, F. Bettonvil, M. Kenworthy, E. de Mooij, G. Otten, R. ter Horst, and
R. le Poole, “Ground-based search for the brightest transiting planets with the Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA:
MASCARA,” in Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series, Society of
Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series 8444, Sept. 2012.
[2] A.-L. Lesage, J. F. P. Spronck, R. Stuik, F. Bettonvil, D. Pollaco, and I. A. G. Snellen, “MASCARA
multi-site all-sky camera: concept and first results,” in Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers
(SPIE) Conference Series, Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series
9145, pp. 9145–39, June 2014.
[3] R. Stuik, A.-L. Lesage, A. Jakobs, J. F. P. Spronck, and I. A. G. Snellen, “MASCARA: data handling, pro-
cessing, and calibration,” in Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series,
Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series 9152, pp. 9152–21, June 2014.

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