Related papers: Conference summary: Workshop on Precision Astronom…

This paper summarizes the introductory presentation for a workshop that explored the challenges of making precision astronomical measurements using deeply depleted (thick) CCDs. While thick CCDs provide definite advantages in terms of…

The 3.2 gigapixel LSST camera, an array of 189 thick fully-depleted CCDs, will repeatedly image the southern sky and accomplish a wide variety of science goals. However, its trove of tens of billions of object images implies stringent…

In this work we present simple, physics-based models for two effects that have been noted in the fully depleted CCDs that are presently used in the Dark Energy Survey Camera. The first effect is the observation that the point-spread…

Thick, Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) have recently been explored for applied physics, such as nuclear explosion monitoring, and dark matter detection purposes. When run in fully-depleted mode, these devices are sensitive detectors for…

Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) have been successfully used in several low energy X-ray astronomical satellite over the past two decades. Their high energy resolution and high spatial resolution make them an perfect tool for low energy…

Upcoming and current large astronomical survey experiments often seek to constrain cosmological parameters via measurements of subtle effects such as weak lensing, which can only be measured statistically. In these cases, instrumental…

Depth completion aims at predicting dense pixel-wise depth from an extremely sparse map captured from a depth sensor, e.g., LiDARs. It plays an essential role in various applications such as autonomous driving, 3D reconstruction, augmented…

Flat-field images with thick, fully-depleted CCDs exhibit response variations near the edges of the chip and at other locations, such as the regoins bordering mid-frame blooming stop implants. Two possible origins for these repsonse…

Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) detectors, widely used to obtain digital imaging, can be damaged by high energy radiation. Degraded images appear blurred, because of an effect known as Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI), which trails bright…

We characterize the response of a novel 250 $\mu$m thick, fully-depleted Skipper Charged-Coupled Device (CCD) to visible/near-infrared light with a focus on potential applications for astronomical observations. We achieve stable,…

Thick back-illuminated deep-depletion CCDs have superior quantum efficiency over previous generations of thinned and traditional thick CCDs. As a result, they are being used for wide-field imaging cameras in several major projects. We use…

We characterize the astrometric distortion at the edges of thick, fully-depleted CCDs in the lab using a bench-top simulation of LSST observing. By illuminating an array of forty thousand pinholes (30mu m diameter) at the object plane of a…

Radiation damage to space-based Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) detectors creates defects which result in an increasing Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) that causes spurious image trailing. Most of the trailing can be corrected during…

Perceiving the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the spacecraft is a prerequisite for successfully executing many on-orbit space missions, and it can provide critical input for many downstream vision algorithms. In this paper, we propose…

This paper introduces Scene Completeness-Aware Depth Completion (SCADC) to complete raw lidar scans into dense depth maps with fine and complete scene structures. Recent sparse depth completion for lidars only focuses on the lower scenes…

We use an empirical approach to characterize the effect of charge-transfer efficiency (CTE) losses in images taken with the Wide-Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The study is based on profiles of warm pixels in 168 dark…

We describe a camera beam simulator for the LSST which is capable of illuminating a 60mm field at f/1.2 with realistic astronomical scenes, enabling studies of CCD astrometric and photometric performance. The goal is to fully simulate LSST…

Context. The determination of accurate photometric redshifts (photo-zs) in large imaging galaxy surveys is key for cosmological studies. One of the most common approaches are machine learning techniques. These methods require a…

Thick, fully depleted p-channel charge-coupled devices (CCDs) have been developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). These CCDs have several advantages over conventional thin, n-channel CCDs, including enhanced quantum…

We review the systematic uncertainties that have plagued attempts to obtain high precision and high accuracy from ground-based photometric measurements using CCDs. We identify two main challenges in breaking through the 1% precision…