  ARCONS, the Array Camera for Optical to Near-infrared Spectrophotometry, was
recently commissioned at the Coude focus of the 200-inch Hale Telescope at the
Palomar Observatory. At the heart of this unique instrument is a 1024-pixel
Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector (MKID), exploiting the Kinetic Inductance
effect to measure the energy of the incoming photon to better than several
percent. The ground-breaking instrument is lens-coupled with a pixel scale of
0.23"/pixel, with each pixel recording the arrival time (<2 microsec) and
energy of a photon (~10%) in the optical to near-IR (0.4-1.1 microns) range.
The scientific objectives of the instrument include the rapid follow-up and
classification of the transient phenomena.
