Cooling
The CCD is cooled to help reduce thermally generated electrons in the detector.
A 4-stage Marlow Ind. thermo-electric (TE) cooling device is built into the
camera head. The heat drawn from the CCD and the heat produced by the TE cooler
is dissipated into the telescope structure in the UCO/Lick standard design.
It is anticipated that this camera may be used in one or more instruments for
the Keck II telescope, and there heat from the TE cooler will be removed using
the Observatory's glycol cooling system. The CCD and cooler are mounted in an
evacuated chamber at the front of the camera. Tests have put the device temperature
at -37C.
CCDs
These cameras are set up for frame transfer operation and use
half of a 690 x 400 high-resistivity LBNL CCD, with 24 micron pixels. The detector
mounting package is shown at right. Camera electronics however can accommodate
just about any CCD. If appropriate, a second signal processing board can be
added, and the CCD can be read out through two channels simultaneously. Waveforms
and clocking parameters specific to a CCD must be downloaded to the camera as
discussed in Camera Level Parameters above.
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