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Picture of the Week
Low-Light-Level (L3) CCD testing at Brunel University |
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Characterisation of e2v technologies Low-Light-Level (L3) CCD technology for implementation in the CCDs of Gaia-RVS has continued at Brunel University throughout 2005, and now into 2006, with two devices undergoing long duration testing.
The two CCD97 high resistivity devices, representative of the devices baselined for use in RVS, have been operating continuously at -100oC since October 2005. Data have been recorded a number of times, during the more than 1500 hours of operation, to characterise any long term changes in the L3 gain of each device. To date, the L3 gain has remained very stable in each device, a change in operating voltage of only ~0.2 volts being required to maintain the specified RVS operational gain of x8. Life testing of the two devices will continue into 2006.
The photograph shows the optics laboratory at Brunel where the life testing is taking place. The two vacuum chambers each contain one of the CCD97 devices. The temperature and turbo pump controllers, CCD drive unit and associated electronics are positioned to the right of each chamber.
Photo courtesy of David Ryan Smith.
[Published: 06/02/2006]
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