Nickel Direct Imaging Camera User's Manual: Detector Characteristics

Detector Characteristics

CCD-2 (aka Dewar#2), is a thinned, Loral, 2048 x 2048 CCD, with 15-micron pixels. Its 0.184 arcsec/pixel plate scale gives a field of view of about 6.3 x 6.3 arcminutes. CCD-2 is currently the only detector available for direct imaging on the Nickel telescope. See CCD-2 specifications for QE and other characteristics.

Readnoise and gain (measured on telescope by E.G. April 2006) for each binning and readout mode is listed below.

Binning Readout
Speed Gain
(e-/DN) Readnoise
(e-) Readout Time
(m:ss) Approx. Bias
(DN)

x1 slow 2.0 8.6 1:16 1000

x1 fast 2.0 17.8 0:17 1000

x2 slow 1.7 8.3 0:21 1000

x2 fast 1.8 14.0 0:05 1000

x4 slow 1.7 10.0 0:06 1000

x4 fast 1.8 14.8 0:02 1000

Binning	Readout Speed	Gain (e-/DN)	Readnoise (e-)	Readout Time (m:ss)	Approx. Bias (DN)
x1	slow	2.0	8.6	1:16	1000
x1	fast	2.0	17.8	0:17	1000
x2	slow	1.7	8.3	0:21	1000
x2	fast	1.8	14.0	0:05	1000
x4	slow	1.7	10.0	0:06	1000
x4	fast	1.8	14.8	0:02	1000

The CCD full well depth is 118,000 e-. The chip is linear in response up to 60,000 DN in bin x2 fast mode (measured by E.G. April 2006). Other readout modes may become non-linear at lower count levels, thus keeping peak levels below 50K DN is recommended for all readout modes.

The CCD is read out using a single amplifier and the 32 column overscan region occupies the far right (highest numbered) columns.

Elinor Gates, Bryant Grigsby. Last modified: Fri May 4 12:59:18 PDT 2007

User's Guide to the Nickel Direct Imaging Camera

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Detector Characteristics