An EMCCD camera, designed from the ground up for extreme faint flux imaging, is presented. CCCP, the CCD Controller for Counting Photons, has been integrated with a CCD97 EMCCD from e2v technologies into a scientific camera at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique Experimentale (LAE), Universite de Montreal. This new camera achieves sub-electron read-out noise and very low Clock Induced Charge (CIC) levels, which are mandatory for extreme faint flux imaging. It has been characterized in laboratory and used on the Observatoire du Mont Megantic 1.6-m telescope. The performance of the camera is discussed and experimental data with the first scientific data are presented.
@article{arxiv.0908.0528,
title = {Extreme faint flux imaging with an EMCCD},
author = {Olivier Daigle and Claude Carignan and Jean-Luc Gach and Christian Guillaume and Simon Lessard and Charles-Anthony Fortin and Sebastien Blais-Ouellette},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.0528},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
33 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in PASP