CFH12k: 12k x 8k CCD mosaic camera for the CFHT prime focus

Barry Michael Starr; Gerard Anthony Luppino; Jean-Charles Cuillandre; Sidik Isani

doi:10.1117/12.385474

15 May 2000 CFH12k: 12k x 8k CCD mosaic camera for the CFHT prime focus

Barry Michael Starr, Gerard Anthony Luppino, Jean-Charles Cuillandre, Sidik Isani

Proceedings Volume 3965, Sensors and Camera Systems for Scientific, Industrial, and Digital Photography Applications; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.385474
Event: Electronic Imaging, 2000, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

The CFH12K is a 12k X 8k CCD mosaic camera for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), a 3.6 m telescope located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The CFH12K is comprised of twelve 4k X 2k thinned backside-illuminated CCDs, arranged in a close-packed array of two rows each containing six CCDs. Located at the CFHT Prime Focus (f/4.2), the CFH12K provides a 42 by 28 arcminute field-of-view, 0.206 arcsecond per pixel sampling, with a resulting data file of more than 200 Mbytes per image. The camera has been designed to exploit the exceptional wide-field imaging capability provided by the CFHT. At the time of it's commissioning in January 1999, the CFH12K is the largest thinned close-packed CCD mosaic in astronomy. This paper describes the system architecture, and some of the relevant issues associated with the construction, evaluation, and operation of very large mosaic cameras. Emphasis is given to system design issues, illustrating the CFH12k as part of a larger system: the CFHT.

Citation Download Citation

Barry Michael Starr, Gerard Anthony Luppino, Jean-Charles Cuillandre, and Sidik Isani "CFH12k: 12k x 8k CCD mosaic camera for the CFHT prime focus", Proc. SPIE 3965, Sensors and Camera Systems for Scientific, Industrial, and Digital Photography Applications, (15 May 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.385474

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