The Nassau Station Robotic Telescope Reference

The FLI Camera

The FLI Camera has temporarilly replaced the Apogee Camera as the primary direct imaging camera. Eventually, the FLI Camera will be used as the auto-guider camera to guide the telescope during long exposures.

The field of view of the FLI Camera is significantly larger than the field on the Apogee Camera. Here is a picture of the globular cluster M3 taken with the FLI Camera. The red box shows for contrast, the area that would be covered by the Apogee Camera.

1. The detector is a back illuminated thinned SIA-003AB SITe CCD (1024x1024 pixels) with 24 micron pixels. At full resolution this means each pixel is 0.4 arc seconds. The typical seeing disk is about 8 pixels full width - half maximum.
2. The QE of the CCD is well over 50% for most of the range(see chart) with a full well depth of about 300,000 electrons (photons).
    
3. The CCD temperature is controlled thermoelectrically (Peltier cooling) and can be controlled to +/- 1C and is generally set to 40C below ambient.
    
4. A eight position filter wheel is used. The filters are Johnson BV, Cousins RI with position 5 to 8 empty.