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A new generation wide-field imager is being developed and will be put into service at sites in North and South America. Driven by the requirement for larger imaging areas and more pixels but limited by manufacturing process constraints, manufacturers are developing 2, 3, and 4-side buttable CCDs that can be tiled to achieve large imaging areas as opposed to developing a single large CCD. NOAO has designed, fabricated, and tested a wide-field imager called Mosaic that tiles 8 CCDs to produce an imaging area slightly greater than 123 mm X 123 mm. Several successful science observation runs have been completed using Mosaic at the KPNO Mayall 4 m and .9 m telescopes. A second Mosaic Wide-Field Imager is presently being manufactured and will be deployed at the CTIO Blanco 4 m telescope early next year. This report will focus on the mechanical design aspects of the Mosaic Imager and the upgrade path to achieve the scientific requirements will be discussed.
Muller et al. (Thu,) studied this question.