Characterization of a commercial, front-illuminated interline transfer CCD camera for use as a guide camera on a balloon-borne telescope
Paul Clark (Durham), Richard Massey (Durham), Herrick L. Chang (JPL),, Mathew Galloway (Toronto), Holger Israel (Durham), Laura L. Jones (JPL), Lun, Li (Toronto), Milan Mandic (JPL), Tim Morris (Durham), Barth Netterfield, (Toronto), John Peacock (Edinburgh)
TL;DR
This study characterizes a commercial CCD camera's performance under high-altitude balloon conditions, demonstrating its suitability for precise star-guiding in balloon-borne telescopes.
Contribution
It provides the first detailed performance evaluation of a commercial front-illuminated CCD camera in balloon-like conditions for astronomical guiding applications.
Findings
Camera operates successfully at -40C and 4mBar pressure
Star centroid can be determined with better than 2% of a pixel accuracy
Camera is suitable for closed-loop star-guiding in balloon missions
Abstract
We report results obtained during the characterization of a commercial front-illuminated progressive scan interline transfer CCD camera. We demonstrate that the unmodified camera operates successfully in temperature and pressure conditions (-40C, 4mBar) representative of a high altitude balloon mission. We further demonstrate that the centroid of a well-sampled star can be determined to better than 2% of a pixel, even though the CCD is equipped with a microlens array. This device has been selected for use in a closed-loop star-guiding and tip-tilt correction system in the BIT-STABLE balloon mission.
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