emCCD – does anyone use one ?

[Tim Haymes]

Expensive kit, but useful for faint time dependent events – If anyone has a contact, I would appreciate discussing possibilities with them (e.g. a lone ).  I can be contacted off forum here:    occultations@stargazer.me.uk

Many thanks for your help – Tim Haymes (ARPS committee member)

[Grant Privett]

I thought EMCCDs usually clock in at around £15,000 so they are a bit of a niche market. Hope you manage to find a donor.

The QE can be very good – and some go out into NIR (1.8micron) but many are stuck with a maximum integration of 1/25 seconds, a slightly unpredictable gain control and an 8 bit output format. So for dim targets its probably actually cheaper to co-mount 2 OTAs and use 2 CCD cameras at the same time (arranged so the start of readout of one initiates the integration of the other).

Nice idea though.

[Callum Potter]

Hi Tim,

I have looked into this a couple of times, but was not able to find an affordable route…

The last time I got in touch with a supplier (for a Raptor Kite from Laser 2000) they quoted a price starting at £6800.

If you find a ‘cheap’ source I would be interested.

Callum

[Grant Privett]

Thanks for the sanity check Callum. Have checked my files and the £15k system I worked with was SWIR and purchased about 4 years ago and worked at 12bits. Didn’t realise they were so much more sanely priced now (though still out of range for us mortals).

Which of the Kites was that price for?

[Callum Potter]

Hi Grant, I’m not sure if it was an actual quote… but I was asking about a Kite EM247 CL.

http://www.laser2000.co.uk/camera_product.php?no=10426

And there is an interesting application note:

http://www.laser2000.co.uk/pdfs/download/white_papers/Technote-All-Sky-Kite.pdf

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