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Design and development of the 3.2 gigapixel camera for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Journal Article · · Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857920· OSTI ID:1443082
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [1];  [3];  [4];  [3];  [3];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [7];  [7];  [7]
  1. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  2. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
  3. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  5. Inst. National de Physique Nucleaire et de Physique des Particules (IN2P3), Paris (France)
  6. Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States)
  7. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a large aperture, wide-field facility designed to reflect deep images of half the sky every few nights. There is only a single instrument on the telescope, a 9.6 square degree visible-band camera, which is mounted close to the secondary mirror, and points down toward the tertiary. The requirements of the LSST camera present signifcant technical design challenges. To cover the entire 0.35 to 1 μm visible band, the camera incorporates an array of 189 over-depleted bulk silicon CCDs with 10 μm pixels. The CCDs are assembled into 3 x 3 "rafts", which are then mounted to a silicon carbide grid to achieve a total focal plane flatness of 15 μm p-v. The CCDs have 16 amplifiers per chip, enabling the entire 3.2 Gigapixel image to be read out in 2 seconds. Unlike other astronomical cameras, a vast majority of the focal plane electronics are housed in the cryostat, which uses a mixed refrigerant Joule-Thompson system to maintain a -100ºC sensor temperature. The shutter mechanism uses a 3 blade stack design and a hall-effect sensor to achieve high resolution and uniformity. There are 5 filters stored in a carousel around the cryostat and the auto changer requires a dual guide system to control its position due to severe space constraints. This paper presents an overview of the current state of the camera design and development plan.
Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25)
Contributing Organization:
LSST Camera Team
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515; AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
1443082
Report Number(s):
SLAC-PUB--14185
Journal Information:
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, Journal Name: Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering Vol. 7735; ISSN 0277-786X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
CCD
LSST
camera
survey
wide-field
gigapixel