UNCOOLED THERMAL INFRARED CAMERA DEVELOPMENT AT JHU-APL. C. A. Hibbitts, J. D.

Introduction: The application of a large format uncooled thermal imager is potentially as large and varied as an optical camera. These cameras are compact, low powered and with recent advances in uncooled detector technology, megapixel formats are now available, enabling large format high resolution imaging in the thermal infrared with an uncooled detector. Fundamental science and engineering goals can benefit from such a low-powered, compact thermal infrared camera and several current and past missions have successfully used similar detector technology such as the MGS THEMIS instrument [1]. Thermal imaging offers unique measurement capabilities, including the ability to image shadowed surfaces to obtain a full shape model without being reliant on solar reflectance; measuring surface temperature; as well as determining intrinsic physical properties such as thermal inertia. Although these detectors are less sensitive than cryocooled photon counters (such as HgCdTe arrays), they can potentially be utilized for spectroscopy on warm planetary surfaces from the Moon, NEO’s, and Mercury [2]. Development: We have developed an LWIR Camera shown in Figure 1 based on the ULIS UL05251-026 amor