PROCEEDINGS ARTICLE | September 24, 2012
Proc. SPIE. 8446, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Antireflective coatings, Stars, Gemini Observatory, Sensors, Quantum efficiency, Amplifiers, Charge-coupled devices, CCD image sensors, Temperature metrology
The GMOS-N instrument was upgraded with new CCDs in October 2011, improving the instrument sensitivity at both red and blue wavelengths. The deep depletion devices are manufactured by e2v (42-90 with multi-layer 3 coating) and extend the useful wavelength range of GMOS-N to 0.98 microns (compared to 0.94 microns previously). These detectors also exhibit much lower fringing than the original EEV detectors that had been in use since GMOS-N was commissioned in 2002. All other characteristics of the new detectors (readout speed, pixel size and format, detector controller, noise, gain) are similar to the original CCDs. Operating the new detectors in all amps mode (2 per CCD) has effectively improved the readout speed by a factor of 2. The new devices were selected to provide a quick and relatively simply upgrade route while technical issues with the Hamamatsu devices, originally planned for the upgrade, were investigated and resolved. We discuss the rationale for this interim upgrade, the upgrade process and attending issues. The new detectors have been used for science since November 2011. We present commissioning results illustrating the resulting gain in sensitivity over the original detector package. Gemini is still committed to installing Hamamatsu devices, which will further extend the useful wavelength range of GMOS to 1.03 microns, in both North and South GMOS instruments. We discuss the status of the Hamamatsu project and the current planned schedule for these future upgrades.
