New Camera on SPACEWATCH® 1.8-meter Telescope

2011 Oct 10:  We replaced the 1992-vintage imaging CCD detector on our 1.8-meter telescope with a thinned, back-illuminated, antireflection-coated CCD of 2048x2048 pixels cooled thermoelectrically with circulating antifreeze fluid as a heat sink. The smaller pixels of 0.6 arcsec as projected on the sky, and the superior flatness of the new CCD immediately yielded astrometry a factor of two more precise than before. Faster readout also allows more observations per night by use of “staring” exposures at the sidereal rate rather than the drift scanning that the slowly reading CCDs of the early 1990s required. The thermoelectric cooling system brings the detector down to operating temperature in tens of minutes, compared to the 8 4hours it took to cool down the old detector. This allows us to become operational more quickly after electrical storms clear.