The Automated Planet Finder (APF) is a facility purpose-built for the discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets through high cadence Doppler velocimetry of the reflex barycentric accelerations of their host stars. Located atop Mt. Hamilton, the APF facility consists of a 2.4-m telescope and its Levy Spectrometer, an optical echelle spectrometer optimized for precision Doppler velocimetry. APF features a fixed format spectral range from 374 nm -970 nm, and delivers a "Throughput" (resolution * slit width product) of 114,000 arc-seconds, with spectral resolutions up to 150,000.Overall system efficiency (fraction of photons incident on the primary mirror that are detected by the science CCD) on blaze at 560 nm in planet-hunting mode is 15%. Firstlight tests on the RV standard stars HD 185144 and HD 9407 demonstrate sub-m s −1 precision (RMS per observation) held over a 3-month period. This paper reviews the basic features of the telescope, dome, and spectrometer, and gives a brief summary of first-light performance.

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An echelle spectrograph has been constructed for astronomical use at mid-infrared wavelengths. It contains a liquid-helium-cooled echelle grating and a 10 X 64 pixel Si:As impurity band detector array. The array is used to measure a 64-point spectrum with 1000-25,000 resolving power at each of ten points spaced by 0'.'4-3" along a slit. The spectrograph can be used at wavelengths between about 4 and 25 |xm. The instrument has proven to be photon-noise limited with an overall quantum efficiency ranging from ~ 0.02 at 4 jxm wavelength to 0.2 near 20 pan.

An instrument is described that simultaneously records images and spectra of materials in the infrared fingerprint region using a long-wavelength infrared focal-plane array detector, a step-scan Michelson interferometer, and an infrared microscope. With the combination of step-scan Fourier transform (FT) Michelson interferometry and arsenic-doped silicon (Si: As) focal-plane array image detection, an infrared spectroscopic imaging system has been constructed that maintains both an instrumental multiplex and multichannel advantage and operates from approximately 4000 to 400 cm−1. With this method of mid-infrared spectroscopic imaging, the fidelity of the generated spectral images recorded through the microscope is solely determined by the number of pixels on the focal-plane array detector, and only a few seconds of data acquisition time are required for spectral image acquisition. This seamless combination of spectroscopy for molecular analysis and the power of visualization represents the future of infrared microscopy. Step-scan imaging principles, the operation and characteristics of long-wavelength array detectors, and instrument design details are outlined, and infrared chemical imaging results are presented. The results are discussed with respect to their implications for the chemical analysis of a variety of solid-state materials.