FLI PL16803

FLI PL16803 conventional CCD

This CCD camera is currently one of the main imaging instruments on the RCC telescope. The other one is the Andor EMCCD.

An FLI Proline 16803 camera with Johnson-Cousins B,V,R,I and Sloan r,i,z filters is currently mounted on the telescope yielding an approximately 10'x10' FoV. Camera control is implemented via ccdsh after the camera drivers are loaded. This can be done with the following command:

source /usr/local/ccdsh/scripts/load-ace-proline.ccdsh

This line can also be included in the user's local startup script in the home directory. The camera driver file contains the followings:

module mod_fli_camera.so --device 193.225.174.146:8853
module mod_ace_filter.so

define  filter  1       B       "Bessel B"
define  filter  2       V       "Bessel V"
define  filter  3       R       "Bessel R"
define  filter  4       I       "Bessel I"
define  filter  5       C       "Clear"
define  filter  6       E1      "Empty 1"
define  filter  7       E2      "Empty 2"
define  filter  8       r       "Sloan r"
define  filter  9       i       "Sloan i"
define  filter  10      z       "Sloan z"
define  filter  11      E       "Empty"

The first two lines load the camera and filter modules respectively, and the next eleven defines the filters.

Parameters

The basic parameters of the camera and its CCD are the following:

Resolution: 4096 x 4096
Pixel size: 9 x 9 microns
Effective field-of-view: 9.6 x 9.6 arcminutes
Effective resolution: 0.14"/pixel
Available binning modes: 1x1, 2x2, 4x4.
Detector: KAF16803
Gain: 1.45

Filters

The third column of the driver file contains the filter positions, the fourth the names which the filter can be referred to when using the set filter command, and the fifth contains the names.

Notes

The camera can be cooled to <math>-40^{\circ}\mathrm{C}</math> in the winter, however in a warm summer, the lowest point which can be safely reached is around <math>-30^{\circ}\mathrm{C}</math> (consult the power usage via the get temperature command).

In order to avoid oversampling of the PSFs, a 2x2 binning is recommended. Use the command line switch -b 2,2 (or --bin 2,2) to specify this binning. For instance, one can use the sequence

sequence -n xyocelotis -b 2,2 10*([g,60],[r,60],[i,60])

The pickoff mirror and the off-axis guider mirrors block the light from reaching the camera. Do not forget to switch off the spectrograph: acectrl --stop, and move the guider mirror to the side: acectrl --guide-xstage-reset, before starting the observations.

The camera can be focused with the usual set focus command within ccdsh.

For quality test, see this document:pdf