The MUSE instrument detector system

Roland Reiss; Sebastian Deiries; Jean-Louis Lizon; Gero Rupprecht

doi:10.1117/12.925388

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24 September 2012 The MUSE instrument detector system

Roland Reiss; Sebastian Deiries; Jean-Louis Lizon; Gero Rupprecht

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Proceedings Volume 8446, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV; 84462P (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.925388
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Abstract

The MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) instrument (see Bacon et al., this conference) for ESO's Very Large Telescope VLT employs 24 integral field units (spectrographs). Each of these is equipped with its own cryogenically cooled CCD head. The heads are individually cooled by continuous flow cryostats. The detectors used are deep depletion e2v CCD231-84 with 4096x4112 active 15 μm pixels. The MUSE Instrument Detector System is now in the final integration and test phase on the instrument. This paper gives an overview of the architecture and performance of the complex detector system including ESO's New General detector Controllers (NGC) for the 24 science detectors, the detector head electronics and the data acquisition system with Linux Local Control Units. NGC is sub-divided into 4 Detector Front End units each operating 6 CCDs. All CCDs are simultaneously read out through 4 ports to achieve short readout times at low noise levels. All science grade CCDs were thoroughly characterized on ESO's optical detectors testbench facility and the test results processed and documented in a semi-automated, reproducible way. We present the test methodology and the results that fully confirm the feasibility of these detectors for their use in this challenging instrument.

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Roland Reiss, Sebastian Deiries, Jean-Louis Lizon, and Gero Rupprecht "The MUSE instrument detector system", Proc. SPIE 8446, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV, 84462P (24 September 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.925388

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