• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.75-79
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• 2003

The characteristics of the BOES (Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph) CCD camera is presented. In order to get optimum gain and readout noise of the CCD, we examine the variation of the gain and readout noise by changing the value of output drain voltage of the CCD and measuring the gain using transfer curve, which is defined as the plot of variance versus mean exposure level of a homogeneous light onto the CCD surface. The gain and readout noises are optimised to be 0.5e$^-$/ADU and 3e$^-$, which is good for highest signal-to-noise ratio and contrast for the low light level characteristics of the BOES. We also measure the dark count of the CCD by getting five dark images with 3600 seconds exposure time. The mean dark count from median stacked dark images is essentially zero. A table of positions of defected pixels is also presented.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2008

Understanding of the basic characteristics of an astronomical instrument is a prerequisite to obtaining reliable data from the instrument. We have analyzed more than 1,000 calibration images from the Fairchild 486 CCD (hereafter the Maidanak 4k CCD system) attached to the AZT-22 1.5m telescope at Maidanak Astronomical Observatory in Uzbekistan. The Maidanak 4k CCD system supports three readout modes through 1, 2, or 4 amplifiers. In most cases observers use 4-amplifier readout mode to save time. We have tested the stability and seasonal variation of zero levels and confirm that two quadrants of the images (Amp 1 & 2) show no appreciable seasonal variation. but the other two quadrants (Amp 3 & Amp 4) show an evident seasonal variation in the bias level. The Cryo Tiger, the cooling system used at the Maidanak 4k CCD system, maintains the CCD temperature at -108'E, and effectively suppresses the dark electrons. The mean value versus the variance plot of the flat images does not show the expected relation for an ideal Poisson noise distribution and this is attributed to the large variation in quantum efficiency between different pixels. In addition, we confirm that there is no appreciable difference in gain between readout amplifiers, but there is a large variation in quantum efficiency across CCD chip especially in U. Due to the finite length of shutter opening and closing time, the effective exposure time varies across the science images. We introduce two parameters to quantify the effect of this uneven illumination and present a method to remove these effects. We also present a method to remove the interference patterns appearing in the images obtained with longer wavelength filters and investigate the spatial variation of the point spread function.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 1996

Charge-coupled device(CCD) array detectors are widely used in real time modulation transfer function(MTF) measurement systems. This paper presents the characteristics of two-dimensional CCDs used in a real time MTF measurement system for copy lenses. The MTF characteristics of a copy lens measured by this equipment show different results according to the direction of shift register, shutter speed and the amplifier gain of CCDs. An object generator is fabricated to reduce the variation of MTF values for the irradiance nonuniformity in on-axis and off-axis image plane and this MTF equipment is calibrated by using a standard lens.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.67-78
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• 1995

An introduction to the first CCD camera system in Bohyunsan Optica1 Astronomy Observatory(CCD#l) is presented. The CCD camera adopts modular dewar design of IfA(Institute for Astronomy at Hawaii University) and SDSU(San Diego State University) general purpose CCD controller. The user interface is based on IfA design of easy-to-use QUI program running on the NeXT workstation. The characteristics of the CCD#l including Gain, Charge Transfer Efficiency, rms Read-Out Noise, Linearity and Dynamic range is tested and discussed. The CCD#l shows 6.4 electrons RON and gain of 3.49 electrons per ADU, and the optimization resulted in about 27 seconds readout time guaranteeing charge transfer efficiency of 0.99999 for both direction. Linearity test shows that non-linear coefficient is $6{\times}10^{-7}$ in the range of 0 to 30,000 ADU.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.31-36
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• 2001

We present the characteristics of the 2K CCD camera at the Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory of the Korea Astronomy Observatory at the time of its development. The purpose of this paper is to support the observers who may need detailed information on the characteristics of the camera and to provide helpful information on the optimization' of a CCD camera for those who try to develop their own camera. The 2K CCD camera was optimized to have a gain of $1.8e^-/ADU$ and a read out noise of $7e^-$ from an experiment using radioactive $^{55}Fe$ X-ray source. The charge transfer efficiency was measured as 0.9999976 for serial and 0.9999942 for parallel direction, which means $0.5\%$ charge loss along the serial direction and $1.2\%$ along the parallel direction across the chip. The quantum efficiency of the camera was measured from an experiment using a homogeneous light source consisting of a halogen lamp and an integrating sphere with a monochromator. The resulting quantum efficiency of the camera peaked at the wavelength range 600-700 nm with the value of $\~0.89$.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.222.2-222.2
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• 2012

Camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse (CQUEAN) is an optical CCD camera attached to the 2.1m Otto Struve telescope at the McDonald Observatory, USA. CCD output signal contains the electrons generated by photoionization of incident light and thermal ionization. Therefore reliable photometric result can be obtained only under the stable condition of CCD thermal properties. We investigated the temperature dependency of the various characteristics of CQUEAN CCD chip, including bias level, dark level, gain, and quantum efficiency (QE), with the CQUEAN observation and calibration data obtained during 2012 May run. We discuss the environmental effects, i.e., ambient temperature, as well as CCD temperature on the stability of its characteristics.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.514-525
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• 2001

Optimum characteristics of digital X-ray sensor components were analyzed to develop intra- oral dental digital X-ray image sensor using indirect method. Parametric analysis was carried out to optimize the phosphor thickness and the fiber optic plate (FOP) coupling to charge coupled device (CCD). X-ray absorption and light diffusion in the phosphor layer were analyzed by the Monte Carlo method. Real time X-ray image was obtained with prototype X- ray image sensor using general CCD camera with 1∼10 Ip/mm resolution. It has been previously shown that large resolution degradation in X-ray images was caused by miss alignment of FOP to CCD and optical adhesive selection. In this study, we reported that X-ray image quality was greatly improved by using optimized characteristics of alignment device and phosphor thickness.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.185-191
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• 2004

We have been developing a solar observing system based on a fast CCD camera 1M30P made by the DALSA company. Here we examine and present the characteristics and performance of the camera. For this we have analyzed a number of images of a flat wall illuminated by a constant light source. As a result we found that in the default operating mode 1) the mean bias level is 49 ADU/pix, 2) the mean dark current is about 8 ADU /s/pix, 3) the readout noise is 1.3 ADU, and 4) the gain is about 42 electrons/ ADU. The CCD detector is found to have a linearity with a deviation smaller than $6\%$, and a uniform sensitivity better than $1\%$. These parameters will be used as basic inputs in the analysis of data to be taken by the camera.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.30-37
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• 2003

To effectively control a vast amount of postal packages, we need the automatic system for extracting the address region from CCD scanner images. In this paper, we propose a address region extraction algorithm in the standard postal label. We used geometric characteristics of the underlying address regions and defined several criteria for fast detection of address regions. As a result, we accomplished a successful detection and classification of the postal package labels in real time.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.9-18
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• 1987

An electro-optic system using linear photosensitive Charge Coupled Devices(CCDs) having dummy pixels has been proposed for realzation of linear prodictor in the differential pulse code modulation(DPCM). The system consists of three components as conventional system:input light source, spatial filter(mask) and CCD line scanning sensor. For the delay time due to the dummy pixels in CCD, modifying conventional mask, a new dispersive mask is proposed, of which every prediction coefficient is dispersed on the more than one element, the characteristics of the system using the proposed dispersive mask are analyzed theoretically and verified with experiment.