State-Of-The-Art Space Telescope Digicon Performance Data

The Digicon has been chosen by NASA as the detector for two of the focal plane instruments on the Space Telescope. Both detectors are 512 channel, parallel output devices and feature photon-counting capability. Recently, tubes for this application have been fabri-cated and tested at Electronic Vision Company. Using a unique computer-assisted test facility, these tubes have been characterized with respect to diode array performance, photocathode response (1100-9000 A), and imaging capability. In this paper, data are pre-sented on diode dark current and capacitance distributions, pulse height resolution, photocathode quantum efficiency, uniformity and blemishes, dark count rate, distortion, resolution, and crosstalk. Results indicate that the Space Telescope Digicon is capable of extremely low-noise performance in the pulse counting mode.© (1980) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.