ROSA: A High-cadence, Synchronized Multi-camera Solar Imaging System

The Rapid Oscillations in the Solar Atmosphere (ROSA) instrument is a synchronized, six-camera high-cadence solar imaging instrument developed by Queen's University Belfast. The system is available on the Dunn Solar Telescope at the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, USA, as a common-user instrument. Consisting of six 1k x 1k Peltier-cooled frame-transfer CCD cameras with very low noise (0.02 -aEuro parts per thousand 15 e s(-1) pixel(-1)), each ROSA camera is capable of full-chip readout speeds in excess of 30 Hz, or 200 Hz when the CCD is windowed. Combining multiple cameras and fast readout rates, ROSA will accumulate approximately 12 TB of data per 8 hours observing. Following successful commissioning during August 2008, ROSA will allow for multi-wavelength studies of the solar atmosphere at a high temporal resolution.