Night Vision for Small Telescopes
Robert Strausbaugh, Rebecca Jackson, Nat Butler

TL;DR
This paper investigates the use of off-the-shelf InGaAs NIR detectors with small telescopes for cost-effective astronomical observations, demonstrating their capability for detecting bright and faint sources, and achieving high-precision photometry.
Contribution
It presents the first comprehensive evaluation of room-temperature InGaAs cameras for astronomical use, including laboratory characterization and on-sky testing with small telescopes.
Findings
Able to detect faint sources down to J=16.4 at 10σ in one minute
Achieved milli-magnitude precision for sources brighter than J=8
Successfully measured sub-percent flux variations in an exoplanet transit
Abstract
We explore the feasibility of using current generation, off-the-shelf, indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) near-infrared (NIR) detectors for astronomical observations. Light-weight InGaAs cameras, developed for the night vision industry and operated at or near room temperature, enable cost-effective new paths for observing the NIR sky, particularly when paired with small telescopes. We have tested an InGaAs camera in the laboratory and on the sky using 12 and 18-inch telescopes. The camera is a small-format, 320x240 pixels of 40m pitch, Short Wave Infra-Red (SWIR) device from Sensors Unlimited. Although the device exhibits a room-temperature dark current of per pixel, we find observations of bright sources and low-positional-resolution observations of faint sources remain feasible. We can record unsaturated images of bright () sources due to the…
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