High-Precision Photometry with a scientific CMOS Camera: II On-Sky Testing of the Marana camera at the NGTS facility

TL;DR

This study evaluates the on-sky performance of the Marana scientific CMOS camera at the NGTS facility, demonstrating its comparable photometric precision to CCDs and highlighting its advantages in readout speed and photon detection for astronomical time-series observations.

Contribution

The paper provides the first on-sky comparison of the Marana CMOS camera with a traditional CCD, showing its suitability for high-precision photometry in astronomy.

Findings

Marana CMOS achieves 500 ppm precision at 10 mag in 30 minutes.

CMOS detects 20% more photons per second than CCD in standard mode.

CMOS performs slightly better in photon-limited photometry due to faster readout.

Abstract

Modern scientific CMOS cameras offer very fast readout speeds and low read noise. In this study, we evaluate the performance of the Andor Marana CMOS camera through on-sky testing carried out at the NGTS facility at the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile. We mount the Marana camera to an NGTS telescope, and conduct photometric observations of bright stars. In particular, we target transit events around eight known bright exoplanet host stars. Simultaneous observations are carried out using an existing Andor iKon-L CCD camera on a neighbouring NGTS telescope. This allows for a direct comparison of the photometric precision between the CMOS and CCD cameras. We find that the Marana CMOS exhibits a similar level of photometric performance to the CCD camera, achieving 500\,ppm at a 30-minute timescale for a T $=10$\,mag star. Although the CCD has a slightly better quantum efficiency over the NGTS filter range (520-890\,nm), we find that the faster readout speed of the CMOS compared to the CCD means that the CMOS camera detects 20\,\% more photons per unit time for a solar-type star in our standard 10\,s exposure time operation mode. This results in the CMOS performing slightly better photometry in the photon-limited regime. We conclude that modern CMOS cameras, such as the Marana, are very well-suited for astronomical time-series photometry applications.