Juan de Vicente

System architecture of the Dark Energy Survey Camera readout electronics

The Dark Energy Survey makes use of a new camera, the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). DECam will be installed in the Blanco 4M telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). DECam is presently under construction and is expected to be ready for observations in the fall of 2011. The focal plane will make use of 62 2Kx4K and 12 2kx2k fully depleted Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) for guiding, alignment and focus. This paper will describe design considerations of the system; including, the entire signal path used to read out the CCDs, the development of a custom crate and backplane, the overall grounding scheme and early results of system tests.

The PAU camera and the PAU survey at the William Herschel Telescope

The Physics of the Accelerating Universe (PAU) is a project whose main goal is the study of dark energy. For this purpose, a new large field of view camera (the PAU Camera, PAUCam) is being built. PAUCam is designed to carry out a wide area imaging survey with narrow and broad band filters spanning the optical wavelength range. The PAU Camera is now at an advance stage of construction. PAUCam will be mounted at the prime focus of the William Herschel Telescope. With the current WHT corrector, it will cover a 1 degree diameter field of view. PAUCam mounts eighteen 2k×4k Hamamatsu fully depleted CCDs, with high quantum efficiency up to 1 μm. Filter trays are placed in front of the CCDs with a technologically challenging system of moving filter trays inside the cryostat. The PAU Camera will use a new set of 42 narrow band filters ranging from ~4400 to ~8600 angstroms complemented with six standard broad-band filters, ugrizY. With PAUCam at the WHT we will carry out a cosmological imaging survey in both narrow and broad band filters that will perform as a low resolution spectroscopic survey. With the current survey strategy, we will obtain accurate photometric redshifts for galaxies down to iAB~22.5 detecting also galaxies down to iAB~24 with less precision in redshift. With this data set we will obtain competitive constraints in cosmological parameters using both weak lensing and galaxy clustering as main observational probes.

Readout electronics for the Dark Energy Camera

The goal of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) is to measure the dark energy equation of state parameter with four complementary techniques: galaxy cluster counts, weak lensing, angular power spectrum and type Ia supernovae. DES will survey a 5000 sq. degrees area of the sky in five filter bands using a new 3 deg2 mosaic camera (DECam) mounted at the prime focus of the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro-Tololo International Observatory (CTIO). DECam is a ~520 megapixel optical CCD camera that consists of 62 2k x 4k science sensors plus 4 2k x 2k sensors for guiding. The CCDs, developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and packaged and tested at Fermilab, have been selected to obtain images efficiently at long wavelengths. A front-end electronics system has been developed specifically to perform the CCD readout. The system is based in Monsoon, an open source image acquisition system designed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). The electronics consists mainly of three types of modules: Control, Acquisition and Clock boards. The system provides a total of 132 video channels, 396 bias levels and around 1000 clock channels in order to readout the full mosaic at 250 kpixel/s speed with 10 e- noise performance. System configuration and data acquisition is done by means of six 0.8 Gbps optical links. The production of the whole system is currently underway. The contribution will focus on the testing, calibration and general performance of the full system in a realistic environment.

Test benches facilities for PAUCam: CCDs and filters characterization

The PAUCam [1] is an optical camera with a 18 CCDs (Hamamatsu Photonics K.K.) mosaic and up to 42 narrow- and broad-band filters. It is foreseen to install it at the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, Canary Islands, Spain. As required by the camera construction, a couple of test bench facilities were developed, one in Madrid (CIEMAT) that is mainly devoted to CCDs read-out electronics development and filter characterization [2], and another in Barcelona (IFAE-ICE) that has as its main task to characterize the scientific CCDs in terms of Dark Current, CTE, QE, RON and many other parameters demanded by the scientific performance required. The full CCDs characterization test bench layout, its descriptions and some optical and mechanical characterization results are summarized in this paper.

The Dark Energy Camera readout system

The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) was developed for use by the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The camera will be installed in the Blanco 4M telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) and be ready for observations in the second half of 2012. The focal plane consists of 62 2×4K and 12 2×2K fully depleted CCDs. The camera provides a 3 sq. degree view and the survey will cover a 5000 sq. degree area. The camera cage and corrector have already been installed. The development of the electronics to readout the focal plane was a collaborative effort by multiple institutions in the United States and in Spain. The goal of the electronics is to provide readout at 250 kpixels/second with less than 15erms noise. Integration of these efforts and initial testing took place at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. DECam currently resides at CTIO and further testing has occurred in the Coudé room of the Blanco. In this paper, we describe the development of the readout system, test results and the lessons learned.

PAU camera: detectors characterization

The PAU Camera (PAUCam) [1,2] is a wide field camera that will be mounted at the corrected prime focus of the William Herschel Telescope (Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, Canary Islands, Spain) in the next months. The focal plane of PAUCam is composed by a mosaic of 18 CCD detectors of 2,048 x 4,176 pixels each one with a pixel size of 15 microns, manufactured by Hamamatsu Photonics K. K. This mosaic covers a field of view (FoV) of 60 arcmin (minutes of arc), 40 of them are unvignetted. The behaviour of these 18 devices, plus four spares, and their electronic response should be characterized and optimized for the use in PAUCam. This job is being carried out in the laboratories of the ICE/IFAE and the CIEMAT. The electronic optimization of the CCD detectors is being carried out by means of an OG (Output Gate) scan and maximizing it CTE (Charge Transfer Efficiency) while the read-out noise is minimized. The device characterization itself is obtained with different tests. The photon transfer curve (PTC) that allows to obtain the electronic gain, the linearity vs. light stimulus, the full-well capacity and the cosmetic defects. The read-out noise, the dark current, the stability vs. temperature and the light remanence.

Architecture of PAU survey camera readout electronics

PAUCam is a new camera for studying the physics of the accelerating universe. The camera will consist of eighteen 2Kx4K HPK CCDs: sixteen for science and two for guiding. The camera will be installed at the prime focus of the WHT (William Herschel Telescope). In this contribution, the architecture of the readout electronics system is presented. Back- End and Front-End electronics are described. Back-End consists of clock, bias and video processing boards, mounted on Monsoon crates. The Front-End is based on patch panel boards. These boards are plugged outside the camera feed-through panel for signal distribution. Inside the camera, individual preamplifier boards plus kapton cable completes the path to connect to each CCD. The overall signal distribution and grounding scheme is shown in this paper.

The PAUCam readout electronics system

The PAUCam is an optical camera with a wide field of view of 1 deg x 1 deg and up to 46 narrow and broad band filters. The camera is already installed on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in the Canary Islands, Spain and successfully commissioned during the first period of 2015. The paper presents the main results from the readout electronics commissioning tests and include an overview of the whole readout electronics system, its configuration and current performance.

The PAU camera at the WHT

The PAU (Physics of the Accelerating Universe) project goal is the study of dark energy with a new photometric technique aiming at obtaining photo-z resolution for Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) roughly one order of magnitude better than current photometric surveys. To accomplish this, a new large field of view camera (PAUCam) has been built and commissioned at the William Herschel Telescope (WHT). With the current WHT corrector, the camera covers ~1 degree diameter Field of View (FoV). The focal plane consists of 18 2kx4k Hamamatsu fully depleted CCDs, with high quantum efficiency up to 1 μm. To maximize the detector coverage within the FoV, filters are placed in front of the CCDs inside the camera cryostat (made of carbon fiber material) using a challenging movable tray system. The camera uses a set of 40 narrow band filters ranging from ~4400 to ~8600 angstroms complemented with six standard broad-band filters, ugrizY. Here, we describe the camera and its first commissioning results. The PAU project aims to cover roughly 100 square degrees and to obtain accurate photometric redshifts for galaxies down to iAB ~ 22:5 detecting also galaxies down to iAB ~ 24 with less precision in redshift. With this data set we will obtain competitive constraints in cosmological parameters using both weak lensing and galaxy clustering as main observational probes.

DESI-GFA testbench facilities for CCDs characterization

The DESI-GFA subsystem, used for Guiding, Focusing and Alignment, is one of the key parts for the DESI instrument (The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument), planned for the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona, U.S. On this paper are presented the test bench facilities developed for the characterization of an e2v CCD230-42 CCD which is expected to be used at room temperature on each one of the ten small cameras composing the DESI-GFA system.