Development of CCD Imaging System Using Thermoelectric Cooling Method

Abstract

We developed low light CCD imaging system using thermoelectric cooling method collaboration with a company to design a commercial model. It consists of Kodak KAF-0401E (768x512 pixels) CCD chip,thermoelectric module manufactured by Thermotek. This TEC system can reach an operative temperature of -25deg. We employed an Uniblitz VS25S shutter and it has capability a minimum exposure time 80ms. The system components are an interface card using a Korea Astronomy Observatory (hereafter KAO) ISA bus controller, image acquisition with AD9816 chip, that is 12bit video processor. The performance test with this imaging system showed good operation within the initial specification of our design. It shows a dark current less than 0.4e-/pixel/sec at a temperature of -10deg, a linearity 99.9+/-0.1%, gain 4.24e-adu, and system noise is 25.3e- (rms). For low temperature CCD operation, we designed a TEC, which uses a one-stage peltier module and forced air heat exchanger. This TEC imaging system enables accurate photometry (+/-0.01mag) even though the CCD is not at 'conventional' cryogenic temperatures (140K). The system can be a useful instrument for any other imaging applications. Finally, with this system, we obtained several images of astronomical objects for system performance tests.