We report results obtained during the characterization of a commercial front-illuminated progressive scan interline transfer CCD camera. We demonstrate that the unmodified camera operates successfully in temperature and pressure conditions (-40C, 4mBar) representative of a high altitude balloon mission. We further demonstrate that the centroid of a well-sampled star can be determined to better than 2% of a pixel, even though the CCD is equipped with a microlens array. This device has been selected for use in a closed-loop star-guiding and tip-tilt correction system in the BIT-STABLE balloon mission.
@article{arxiv.1408.6529,
title = {Characterization of a commercial, front-illuminated interline transfer CCD camera for use as a guide camera on a balloon-borne telescope},
author = {Paul Clark and Richard Massey and Herrick L. Chang and Mathew Galloway and Holger Israel and Laura L. Jones and Lun Li and Milan Mandic and Tim Morris and Barth Netterfield and John Peacock and Ray Sharples and Sara Susca},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.6529},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
14 pages, 16 figures. Accepted in Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation, special issue on Scientific Ballooning