Design of a day/night star camera system

Cheryl D. Alexander; Wesley R. Swift; Kajal Ghosh; Brian D. Ramsey

doi:10.1117/12.368236

5 October 1999 Design of a day/night star camera system

Cheryl D. Alexander, Wesley R. Swift, Kajal Ghosh, Brian D. Ramsey

Proceedings Volume 3779, Current Developments in Optical Design and Optical Engineering VIII; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.368236
Event: SPIE's International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation, 1999, Denver, CO, United States

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a camera system capable of acquiring stars during both the day and night cycles of a high altitude balloon flight. The camera system will be filtered to operate in the R and I bands, and simulations have been run using MODTRAN atmospheric code to determine the worse case sky brightness at 35k. With a worse case daytime sky brightness of 2 X 10^-5/sr/micrometers at 600nm, the sensitivity of the camera system will allow acquisition of at least 1-2 stars/degrees² at star magnitude limits of 7.8-8.1. The system will have an F2.8, 64.3mm diameter lens and a 1340 X 1037 CCD digitized to 12 bits. The CCD is comprised of 6.8micrometers X 6.8micrometers pixels with a well depth of 45,000 electrons and quantum efficiency of 0.54 at 700nm. The camera's field-of-view will be 6.33 degrees² and provide attitude knowledge to 8 arcsec or better. A test flight of the system is scheduled for fall 1999.

Citation Download Citation

Cheryl D. Alexander, Wesley R. Swift, Kajal Ghosh, and Brian D. Ramsey "Design of a day/night star camera system", Proc. SPIE 3779, Current Developments in Optical Design and Optical Engineering VIII, (5 October 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.368236

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