Imaging camera temperature

Forums Spectroscopy Imaging camera temperature ? Imaging camera temperature

#577574
Robin Leadbeater
Participant

Hi David,

Which camera do you have? Some sensors benefit from deep cooling eg the Kodak KAF CCDs. Others, like the Sony CCD, less so. The ATIK cameras I have used only cool ~25C below ambient so I run at -10C all year round which gives negligible thermal noise and saves me worrying about the risk of non matching darks/bias.   Incidentally if you do cool to very low temps, watch out for ghost residual images in following exposures. This can happen for example if you take a faint spectrum image after an overexposed calibration lamp image. I have never seen it myself at -10C but it was a problem than plagued a pro-am campaign I was involved in where they were using  KAF CCD cooled to a low temp.

Cheers

Robin