  The Caltech HIgh-speed Multi-color camERA (CHIMERA) is a new instrument that
has been developed for use at the prime focus of the Hale 200-inch telescope.
Simultaneous optical imaging in two bands is enabled by a dichroic beam
splitter centered at 567 nm, with Sloan u' and g' bands available on the blue
arm and Sloan r', i' and z_s' bands available on the red arm. Additional
narrow-band filters will also become available as required. An Electron
Multiplying CCD (EMCCD) detector is employed for both optical channels, each
capable of simultaneously delivering sub-electron effective read noise under
multiplication gain and frame rates of up to 26 fps full frame (several 1000
fps windowed), over a fully corrected 5 x 5 arcmin field of view. CHIMERA was
primarily developed to enable the characterization of the size distribution of
sub-km Kuiper Belt Objects via stellar occultation, a science case that
motivates the frame-rate, the simultaneous multi-color imaging and the wide
field of view of the instrument. In addition, it also has unique capability in
the detection of faint near-Earth asteroids and will be used for the monitoring
of short duration transient and periodic sources, particularly those discovered
by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), and the upcoming Zwicky
Transient Facility (ZTF).
