CCD Detectors

in
Astronomy
Alejandro Lavrador

1. CCD Detectors
Photographic plates:

Limited dynamic range and response to the

Wider dynamic range

brightness of the illuminating light is non-linear.

More sensitive, accurate and linear response to

unlike the eye they were an integrating detector:

fainter objects could be detected by making
longer exposures to accumulate more light,

the images were objective and reproducible

(unlike a sketch),

Photoelectric photometers:

the photographic image constituted a quantitative

measure of the light distribution across the
luminous object (at least in principle).

brightness.

Dont produce an image(output the value of

brightness in sky in the point measured)

1. CCD Detectors
CCD: Charge-Couple devices

High sensitivity, linear response.

Large dynamic range.
Produces image of sky being viewed.

1. CCD Detectors

Semiconductor chip
Face sensitive to light
Grid of rectangular areas(Picture
elements or Pixels)
Photon generates small electric
charge that is stored.
That charge is cumulative, higher
charge = brighter signal.
Resolution or arrays of 64, 256,
512, 1024, 2048, etc...

1. CCD Detectors

Analog-to-digital Converter (ADC) with

16-bit accuracy at least.
Reads charge and gives back a value
(number) depending on the amount of
charge.
This number, Analogue Data Units, is not
in physical Units.
We calibrate with the ADC factor,
proportionality between ADUs and
charge.
Computer gets image directly.

1. CCD Detectors

Quantum Efficiency of 80%.

Broader range of wavelengths.
More sensibility on Red lights.
Bad Response in Blue and UV light.
Large Dynamic Range(Ratio from
brightest to faintest signal):
It can get a range of 14.5 magnitudes
compared to Photograph which gets
7.5.

1. CCD Detectors

Plate scale: p=/mm ( Units of seconds arc/mm)

If you know the plate scale and the size of the grid or a pixel, you can get the
Angle on the sky or field of view given by that pixel.

The plate scale is usually given by the manual of the instrument. But it may be
calculated from the effective focal length:
p=1/f ,
where p is in radians or any unit f is in. If f is in meters and we apply
conversion from radians to seconds of arc:
p=206.26/f

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Bad Pixels
Read-out signal:bias
Non-linearity
Thermal noise, dark current
Pixel sensitivity,flat fielding
Cosmic-ray events
Photon noise

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Bad Pixels

Faulty pixels that return inaccurate signals.

These are called hot, cold or bad
Because of the readout method to get the values from pixels, they may
contaminate the whole column or row, leading to bad rows or columns.
To fix them we replace them with values computed from neighbouring
pixels.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Read-out signal, bias

Caused by the amplifier boosting the signal before sending it to the analogto-digital converter, thus biasing the signal by some amount.

There is 2 methods to estimate and correct them:

Bias Strips:
Bias Frames

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Read-out signal, bias

CCD generates 2
regions, that contain
only readouts of the
CCD without sampling
its charge.
These regions contain
only values of noise and
bias, so these can be
substracted from all
pixels in the row.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Read-out signal, bias

In the Bias Frames, all CCD is read-out without sampling charges,

and this frame is used to substract noise from the final image
frames.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Non-linearity

If the incoming light is bright enough, then it may become nonlinear and saturate(it doesnt produce change in the recorded
signal anymore)
It may be prevented by taking a larger number of short exposure
shots.
This technique offers also advantage to remove cosmic-ray events.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Thermal noise, dark current

Offset from zero that is generated thermally within the CCD, even
without light.
Its called dark current.
Varies with time and from pixel to pixel slowly, and its minimized by
keeping the CCD cool with liquid nitrogen.
It can be measured by taking long exposure with shutter closed, then
removing bias and cosmic-ray events and dividing by the exposure
time.
Its usually insignificant for visible light, but important for infrared
light.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Pixel sensitivity, flat fielding

Pixel sensitivity vary slightly between them across the grid.

Can be calibrated by taking an image of an evenly iluminated
source, such as twilight sky.
This is known as flat fielding, and pixel-to-pixel sensitivity variations
change with wavelength, so flat field must be acquired using same
filter as the observation of the target objects.
It also corrects for other effects:

small sharp dark features, produced by dust particles

ring or torus features, produced by dust on filters that are out of focus.

vignetting, dimming of objects in the edge of the field of view, produced by

obstruction of light, eg secondary mirror support

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Pixel sensitivity, flat fielding
Dome flats

Dome flats are images of the inside of the telescope dome, evenly
iluminated.
The interior surface is usually a smooth diffuse reflector and its out of
focus for the telescope optics so the image obtained is featureless.
This is convenient because dome flats can be taken during day rather than
night or twilight.
Disadvantages are:

Light reflected from dome is incident at different angle to light from sky, it affects vignetting
and shape of images formed by dust particles
The colour is not the same as of the night sky.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Pixel sensitivity, flat fielding
Sky flats

Sky flats are images from the sky taken during twilight when its bright.
The sky must be much brighter than any stars but not enough to saturate.
The time to acquire the flat field depends on the filter.
A narrow filter ( wavelength for which the chip is insensitive, or wavelength
range where sun emits little light), can be taken nearer to sunrise or sunset
than a broadband filter.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Pixel sensitivity, flat fielding

Possible to combine different sorts of flat fields. To obtain

advantages of each.
Example:
Use Dome flats for pixel-to-pixel sensitivity and twilight flats for the
large-scale effects, such as vignetting.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Cosmic-ray events

Signals in CCD frames caused by ionising radiation.

When a cosmic-ray particle hits a pixel it increases its charge.
They appear as a set of pixels with intense values scattered over the
CCD frame.
In an exposure of minutes we might have a hundred of cosmic-ray
hits.
To correct it, if we take several frames of the same object, the
cosmic-ray hits will be random in different positions, so it will be
possible to detect and remove them by comparing the pixels in the
different images.

2. Instrumental Effects in CCD Detectors

Photon noise

The last source of noise is photon noise, due to the way of counting
photons.
This noise is irreducible and proportional to the square root of the
signal.

3. Reducing CCD Data

Introduction

There are many steps between the data coming out of a camera and
the final image that we see on internet.
It may be split intro 3 sections:

Preliminary: from the telescope to Photoshop

Cleaning: Remove the artifacts remaining in the image.
Final touch: Remove large scale effects, color correct, balance, publish.

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps

The CCD can only take shots in black and white, for more flexibility and
sensitivity, so filters must be used to rebuild the colour information.
The procedure is to take shots with the different filters and then recombine
them to form the colour image.
Basic filters are Red, Green and Blue, but there are many others that can be
used to expand even more the colour range, such as UV, IR or a common
one, red H_alpha, which highlights Hydrogen gas.
This frames must first be cleaned from all instrumental and electronic effects
that affect them.

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps
Bias Substraction

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps
Dark Current

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps
Flat Field

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps
Flat Field

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps
Flat Field

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps
Flat Field

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps
Flat Field

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps
Flat Field

3. Reducing CCD Data

Preliminary Steps

At this stage, the images are still in FITS format, the astronomical format.
And we have one FITS file per filter.
FITS files are 16 bits , this means 65536 levels of gray.
Even if we can work in photoshop with 16 and 32 bits images, the standard
on internet, called sRGB, is 8 bit images with a colour space determined.
So we must do this in photoshop, before publishing them.
We import the different filters in photoshop and align them, and we get a
colour image, but the result is still horrible because we need to clean many
artifacts on them.

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning

Even if we removed the bias and vignetting and some other artifacts, there is
still more artifacts to be cleaned now in our photoshop file.
We can clean them manually or using filters in Photoshop.

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Bad columns and traps

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Bad columns and traps

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Bad columns and traps

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Hair, dust...

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Hair, dust...

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Hair, dust...

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Cosmic Rays

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Cosmic Rays

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Saturation Bleed

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Oversaturation Dot

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Satellites

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Diffraction pattern

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Background Steps

3. Reducing CCD Data

Cleaning
Ghosts