  MAIA, an acronym for Mercator Advanced Imager for Asteroseismology, is a
three-channel instrument that targets fast-cadence three-colour photometry,
installed at the 1.2-m Mercator telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos at La
Palma (Canary Islands, Spain). This instrument observes a 9.4x14.1arcmin2
Field-of-View simultaneously in three wavelength bands on three large
frame-transfer CCDs. These detectors were developed for ESA's cancelled
Eddington space mission and were offered on permanent loan to the Institute of
Astronomy (KU Leuven, Belgium). MAIA uses its own ugr photometric system that
is a crude approximation of the SDSS system. The instrument is designed to
perform multi-colour observations for asteroseismology, with specific emphasis
on subdwarf and white dwarf single and binary stars. We describe the design of
the instrument, discuss key components, and report on its performance and first
results.
