ESA Science & Technology - The Optical Monitoring Camera, OMC

The OMC offers INTEGRAL the opportunity to make automatically, simultaneous observations of the visible light coming from the gamma-ray and X-ray sources. Such observations are particularly important in high-energy astrophysics because emission from a source can change very rapidly.

The OMC can register objects of magnitude 18.2 in a 1000 second exposure and is basically a traditional refracting telescope (it uses a lens to focus light). It has a 5 cm lens and a charge-coupled device (CCD) detector in the focal plane. The principal investigation institution is INTA/LAEFF, Spain.