COSMIC (Carnegie Observatories Spectroscopic Multislit and Imaging Camera) is a high throughput imaging camera and multiobject spectrograph built by Alan Dressler, Bill Kells, and Anand Sivaramakrishnan (OCIW) for the prime focus of the Palomar 200-inch Hale telescope. It has two user modes: (1) direct imaging and (2) imaging and spectroscopy through reimaging optics. The choice of either mode is made by the PI on the green sheet in advance of the run, and cannot be changed during a night.
The instrument rides in the prime focus cage atop an instrument mounting base with the filter wheel, shutter and guider camera. The Camera is controlled by a new ArcVIEW/LabVIEW based GUI that is similar the the other Palomar ArcVIEW camera GUIs. The base, wheels, and guider controls are run within a new LabVIEW based GUI. Image analysis and IRAF based scripts are still run in the IRAF environment.