Development of the BIGMIC photon-counting detector for astronmomical applications

University College London and The Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine are together developing a new large area imaging photon counting system, BIGMIC, for use primarily on very large telescopes. This detector is designed for applications requiring the highest sensitivity and resolution such as, high dispersion Echelle spectroscopy. The system incorporates a specially designed 75mm active diameter image intensifier fibre- optically coupled to a fast scanning 770 x 576 pixel frame transfer CCD. Photon events at the intensifier output screen are centroided to 1/8 of a CCD pixel in both X and Y in order to sample adequately the point spread function of the intensifier, giving a data acquisition format of 6160 x 4608 sub-pixles. The area imaged onto the CCD is 61mm x 46mm with a data acquisition pixel size of 10 micrometers . A hardware windowing facility, built into the detector system, enables the astronomer to select a subset of the imaging area for data acquisition. This permits the user to match the system to specific applications; for example in a number of spectroscopic applications an essentially one dimensional image is required and a detector format of perhaps 6160 x 100 pixels could be utilized.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.