By Patrick Martinez
High-performance charged-couple gadget (CCD) cameras have unfolded an exhilarating new window at the Universe for beginner astronomers. This e-book offers an entire, self-contained consultant to picking and utilizing CCD cameras. starting with a no-nonsense creation to CCD cameras, the authors clarify what determines digicam functionality and show how one can use a CCD digital camera and safely calibrate the photographs received. The publication additionally offers a transparent evaluation of the software program to be had for visualizing, reading and processing electronic photographs. eventually, the authors navigate a sequence of key components in astronomy the place astronomers could make the simplest use of CCD cameras. this useful quantity is filled with functional assistance. It presents a transparent creation to CCD astronomy for newbies and an quintessential reference for more matured beginner astronomers.
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Additional resources for A Practical Guide to CCD Astronomy (Practical Astronomy Handbooks)
Sample text
Unfortunately, these transfers are not 100% effective: a small percentage of transferred electrons are lost at each transfer. This phenomenon has two illfated consequences. Firstly, the quantity of electrons read in a strongly illuminated pixel is slightly less than the quantity of electrons generated because of electrons lost en route. Secondly, these lost electrons are recovered by subsequent pixels, which augment the charge. 99999, which means that only one out of 100 000 electrons is lost at each pixel transfer.
This is only rarely possible with photographic film, since a faint object, beneath the film's sensitivity threshold, does not provoke any reaction in the film's emulsion; therefore, combining a large number of images that contain nothing is useless. • The number of electrons generated is proportional to the quantity of incident light, regardless of the integration time. Unlike film, the CCD is not affected by the Schwarzschild effect or deviation from the law of reciprocity. Exposing 1000 seconds on a CCD generates exactly ten times more electrons than a 100 second exposure would; unfortunately, this is not the case with photographic film, which undergoes an important drop in sensitivity as the exposure time is lengthened, making long integration times almost useless.
Fortunately, dark current generation depends strongly on the temperature: it is divided by 2 each time the temperature is lowered by about 6 °C. If the CCD is cooled by 60 °C in relation to the ambient temperature, the dark current, therefore, is 1000 times weaker. For this reason, almost all cameras used in astronomy are cooled; the few that are not cooled are very inexpensive and are not suitable for detecting faint objects. The exposure times commonly used in astronomy, and the required detection levels mean that the CCD be cooled so as to limit its dark current.