This award will support the University of Arizona participation in a collaboration of the University of Arizona, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Naval Research Laboratory in the construction and astronomical use of a mid-infrared array camera. This camera will use a Hughes Aircraft Company 20 x 64 Arsenic Doped Silicon Impurity Band Conduction Hybrid Array with a Capacitance Transimpedances Amplifier readout. This detector is particularly suited to providing high sensitivity in both the 10 and 20um atmospheric windows under high background flux ground-based observing conditions. Reflective optics will provide both diffraction limited (0.7 arc seconds/pixel) and superresolution (.34 arc seconds/pixel) operation. The camera electronics and computer provide for operation up to 5000 frames/second to prevent detect saturation at high backorder. The initial observing program will focus on a variety of continuum and spectral line observations of star forming regions in the Milky Way and other galaxies. Some examples are: thermal emission from circumstellar disks of low-mass stars, shocked gas in star formation regions, velocity flows in the galactic center with NeII line imaging, and the nuclei of active galaxies.
