User's Guide to the Prime Focus Camera

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Table of Contents

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Introduction
Description
PFCam User Interfaces
Observing with PFCam
Illustrations

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Mt. Hamilton Homepage

CCD Characteristics (see also Plate Scale and Field of View)

PFCam's detector is a back-illuminated, Fairchild 4096 x 4096 CCD with 15-micron square pixels.

Quantum Efficiency Plot (measured in the lab, Jamuary 2006; opens in a new window).

Readnoise (measured on the telescope, June 2006 by E.G.)

binning	readout speed	gain	readnoise (e-)	readout time (m:ss)	approx. bias (DN) (left amp, right amp)
x1	slow	1.4	3.9	2:40	1750, 1750
x1	fast	1.3	5.4	0:50	1950, 1950
x2	slow	1.5	4.1	0:45	1800, 1800
x2	fast	1.3	5.0	0:15	1800, 1800
x4	slow	1.5	4.4	0:15	1900, 1900
x4	fast	1.3	5.2	0:05	1800, 1800

The CCD is linear over the full 64K DN dynamic range of the A-to-D converters (as measured on the telescope, January 2006 by E.G.). Full well is reached at 118K e-, well beyond the 64K DN A-to-D saturation.

The default setup reads out the CCD using two of the chip's four amplifiers. The overscan regions occupy the far right (highest numbered) columns and correspond to the amplifiers as shown below (overscan regions not to scale).

More PFCam CCD specs and characeristics can be found on our detector pages.