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Published January 1, 1981 | Published
Book Section - Chapter Open

Low And Moderate Resolution Spectroscopy With An Rca Charge-Coupled Device (CCD)

Abstract

An RCA buried channel thinned 320x 512 CCD has recently been put into operation as the detector on the blue side of a new double spectrograph used at the Cassegrain focus of the Hale 5.08-meter telescope. The chip is used in a vacuum dewer at a temperature of -132°C. The electronics are essentially the same as those used by Westphal and Gunn for the Texas Instruments 800x 800 CCD's. The readout noise over most of the chip is 46 electrons per pixel, but on one side of the device there are columns with readout noise three times as high as this. The dark current is approximately 85 electrons per pixel per hour and for most purposes can be neglected. When used in a spectroscopic mode with an f/1.5 beam the CCD shows interference patterns with an amplitude of 5 to 20 percent. This pattern occurs most clearly above 5000 Å. It appears to be stable and can be removed by using standard flat-field exposures. At signal levels of a few hundred electrons there are some charge transfer problems. The quantum efficiency between 4000 and 6500 Å is very high and the efficiency at 3260 Å is about 20 percent of that at 4200 Å. Above 6500 A the sensitivity begins to drop steadily.

Additional Information

© 1981 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Work on the CCD camera and software were supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through grant NGL 05-002-134 and by the National Science Foundation through grant AST 7824842. The author wishes to thank B. Zimmerman and T. Boroson for providing the software for both data acquisition and reduction, F. H. Harris and G. Pauls for electronic design and construction, and J. E. Gunn and J. A. Westphal for generous assistance and advice.

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August 19, 2023
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