CCDs for the instrumentation of the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo

TL;DR

This paper details the characterization of CCD detectors, including quantum efficiency and noise, for use in the Italian National Telescope Galileo's scientific instruments, ensuring optimal performance.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive measurement and comparison of electro-optical properties of CCDs from EEV and LORAL for telescope instrumentation.

Findings

Quantum efficiency and charge transfer efficiency characterized.

Dark current, readout noise, and linearity measured and compared.

Preliminary on-telescope tests with a mosaic of EEV CCDs conducted.

Abstract

Most of the scientific instrumentation as well as the tracking systems and the Shack- Hartmann wavefront analysers at the Italian National Telescope Galileo use CCDs as detectors. The characterization of detectors is of fundamental importance for their correct utilization in scientific instrumentation. We report on the measurement of the electro-optical characteristics of CCDs that will be used in the scientific instrumentation at the Italian National Telescope. In particular we will show and compare the quantum e{\AE}ciency, the charge transfer e{\AE}ciency, the dark current, the read out noise the uniformity and the linearity of two sets of CCDs manufactured by EEV and LORAL. Finally, we will show the preliminary tests done at the telescope with the optical imager that has a mosaic of two EEV chips.