The UCO/Lick Detector Lab Current Projects

The Lab is currently working on:

New CCD for Shane 3-M Prime Focus Camera

This camera utilizes a SITe 2Kx2K CCD. The camera had its first engineering run in March, 1997.

CCD Thinning Technology

We are developing the technology to thin CCDs in support of Keck Observatory and Lick Observatory CCD requirements. This work is being carried out partly at UC, Santa Cruz, and partly at the Microfabrication Facility at the University of California, Davis. First results!

New Controllers for Mt. Hamilton

The San Diego State controllers are used with the MOS spectrograph, the LIRC-2 infra-red camera, the new prime focus camera, and will eventually replace the old-style Lick controllers.

New CCDs developed for astronomical applications

New high-resistivity CCDs for astronomical applications

We have been working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to produce very high resistivity CCDs (here is an A4 paper version). These CCDs overcome many of the problems with normal, low-resistivity CCDs.

Detector Flatness Measuring System

We are developing a non-contact method for measuring CCD detector flatness. This is an important parameter to control with the large detectors and fast cameras now in use and under development. Check out some of the recent results on Lincoln Labs CCDs.

Testing of MIT/Lincoln Labs CCDs

As part of the work with an international consortium of Observatories to develop new 2Kx4K CCDs, UCO/Lick Observatory is testing CCDs from MIT/Lincoln Laboratory.

CCDs for Keck Instruments

The Lincoln Labs CCDs obtained by Keck will be used in the DEIMOS and ESI spectrographs for Keck Observatory. ESI was just shipped (Aug. 1999) to Hawaii with a Lincoln Labs CCD. We are now working on getting all of the CCDs needed to make the large 8kx8k DEIMOS array of 8 CCDs.