Related papers: Characterization of the SPARC4 CCDs
We present measurements of radioactive contamination in the high-resistivity silicon charge-coupled devices (CCDs) used by the DAMIC experiment to search for dark matter particles. Novel analysis methods, which exploit the unique spatial…
Conventional CCD detectors have two major disadvantages: they are slow to read out and they suffer from read noise. These problems combine to make high-speed spectroscopy of faint targets the most demanding of astronomical observations. It…
Digital correlated double sampling (DCDS), a readout technique for charge-coupled devices (CCD), is gaining popularity in astronomical applications. By using an oversampling ADC and a digital filter, a DCDS system can achieve a better…
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a next generation optical survey aimed at measuring the expansion history of the universe using four probes: weak gravitational lensing, galaxy cluster counts, baryon acoustic oscillations, and Type Ia…
In this paper we describe the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which will be the primary instrument used in the Dark Energy Survey. DECam will be a 3 sq. deg. mosaic camera mounted at the prime focus of the Blanco 4m telescope at the…
We report on the characterization of four Teledyne Imaging Systems HAWAII Hybrid Si CMOS detectors designed for X-ray detection. Three H1RG detectors were studied along with a specially configured H2RG. Read noise measurements were…
The DAMIC (Dark Matter in CCDs) experiment uses high resistivity, scientific grade CCDs to search for dark matter. The CCD's low electronic noise allows an unprecedently low energy threshold of a few tens of eV that make it possible to…
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…
When Charge Coupled Devices are used for scientific observations, their dark signal is a hindrance. In their pristine state, most CCD pixels are `cool'; they exhibit low, quasi uniform dark current, which can be estimated and corrected for.…
In this paper, we propose a robust change detection method for intelligent visual surveillance. This method, named M4CD, includes three major steps. Firstly, a sample-based background model that integrates color and texture cues is built…
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…
We implement an electron avalanche photodiode (e-APD) in the MIRC-X instrument, upgrade of the 6-telescope near-infrared imager MIRC, at the CHARA array. This technology should improve the sensitivity of near-infrared interferometry. We…
The Mini-SiTian project, which is the pathfinder for the SiTian project, utilizes three 30 cm telescopes equipped with commercial CMOS cameras (ZWO ASI6200MM Pro) to simulate large-area time-domain survey. Due to the avoidance of the…
Intensified charge coupled device (ICCD) cameras are widely used in various applications such as microscopy, astronomy, spectroscopy. Often they are used as single-photon detectors, with thresholding being an essential part of the readout.…
We summarize the results of a monitoring program which was executed following the cryogen exhaustion of the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. During the subsequent warm-up,…
We report on Chandra observations of a sample of 11 optically luminous (Mb<-28.5) quasars at z=3.96-4.55 selected from the Palomar Digital Sky Survey and the Automatic Plate Measuring Facility Survey. These are among the most luminous z>4…
We report on the assessment of the imaging performance of CITIUS -- a high-speed X-ray detector developed for the large-scale synchrotron radiation facility SPring-8-II -- for heavy charged particles and neutrons. To characterize the…
EMCCDs are efficient imaging devices for low surface brightness UV astronomy from space. The large amplification allows photon counting, the detection of events versus non-events. This paper provides the statistics of the observation…
Single-photon imaging spectrometers of high quantum efficiency in the infrared to ultraviolet wavelength range, with good timing resolution and with a vanishing dark count rate are on top of the wish list in earth-bound astronomy, material…
The world's leading directional dark matter experiments currently all utilize low-pressure gas Time Projection Chamber (TPC) technologies. We discuss some of the challenges for this technology, for which balancing the goal of achieving the…