Evaluation of scientific CMOS sensors for sky survey applications

TL;DR

This paper evaluates scientific CMOS sensors for sky survey applications, focusing on their stability, linearity, and on-sky performance, to determine their suitability as alternatives to traditional CCD detectors in astronomical surveys.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive laboratory and on-sky assessment of Andor Marana sCMOS sensors, highlighting their potential for wide-field sky surveys and comparing different versions.

Findings

Sensor shows high temporal stability and linearity.

On-sky testing demonstrates effective performance with wide-field lenses.

Results support CMOS sensors as viable alternatives for astronomical surveys.

Abstract

Scientific CMOS image sensors are a modern alternative for a typical CCD detectors, as they offer both low read-out noise, large sensitive area, and high frame rates. All these makes them promising devices for a modern wide-field sky surveys. However, the peculiarities of CMOS technology have to be properly taken into account when analyzing the data. In order to characterize these, we performed an extensive laboratory testing of Andor Marana sCMOS camera. Here we report its results, especially on the temporal stability and linearity, and compare it to the previous versions of Andor sCMOS cameras. We also present the results of an on-sky testing of this sensor connected to a wide-field lens, and discuss its applications for an astronomical sky surveys.