The Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter (MMTF) is a narrow-band filter which is tunable in both central wavelength and transmission bandpass. It is installed in the IMACS spectrograph on the Baade 6.5m telescope, which is located at Las Campanas Observatory. Observers intending to request Baade time to use the MMTF should contact Sylvain Veilleux.

The MMTF is based on a Fabry-Perot etalon with clear aperture of 150mm. It operates in low orders (close plate spacings) to provide a transmission bandpass which is adjustable from ~5 to ~25 Å. The central wavelength of the filter is also tunable from 5000 to over 9200 Å. When used with the IMACS short camera, the field of view of the imager is 27 arcminutes in diameter, and the diameter of the central monochromatic region of the field is ~10 arcminutes at 6600 Å. The MMTF operates on similar principles to the Taurus Tunable Filter.

A complete description of the MMTF and its use can be found in the official paper, published in the Astronomical Journal (Veilleux, S., et al. 2010, AJ, 139, 145-157) and also available on astro-ph. Refer to this paper in all publications based on MMTF data.

The MMTF is made possible by a collaboration among the University of Maryland, the Observatories of the Carnegie Institute of Washington (OCIW), and the Magellan Project, and by the National Science Foundation through an ATI grant (NSF AST-0242860; Sylvain Veilleux, Principal Investigator). Co-Investigators and collaborators include Alan Dressler (OCIW), Joss Bland-Hawthorn (AAO), Bruce Bigelow (OCIW/Michigan), Michael McDonald (Maryland), Michael Rauch (OCIW), David Rupke (Maryland), Patrick Shopbell (Caltech), Brian Sutin (OCIW/Skewray), Ian Thompson (OCIW), Stuart Vogel (Maryland), Benjamin Weiner (Maryland/Arizona), and Ray Weymann (OCIW).