Instrument acceptance

In November 2017, the director of the Calar Alto Observatory and PANIC's principal investigators signed an agreement on the provisional acceptance of the PANIC instrument.

In this agreement it is explained that, except for the detectors, all the instrument packages, Optics, Mechanics, Control Software and Data Processing Software, have fulfilled their requirements and have demonstrated their good functioning.
The detectors, however, present a major and unexpected non-conformance that makes their replacement necessary.

Unfortunately, the detectors installed in PANIC suffer from a degradation that has caused an increase in hot pixels, that, for the worst
detector, has reached 25% of the total number of pixels. Specifically only one of the four detectors that make up the mosaic is suitable for obtaining scientific data.
The signing parties undertake to reach an agreement, within a period of less than one year, to replace the detectors.