FLAMINGOS I Detector

The current array installed in FLAMINGOS-I is an Engineering Grade Rockwell PACE HgCdTe. The Science-Grade Hawaii II array is expected to arrive soon, but its use in 2002A is not guaranteed.

Because broad-band imaging observations are background limited in short exposure times , the readout mode corresponds to a single Fowler (double-correlated sampling) pair. For spectroscopic observations (with low background), 16 sample pairs are used to reduce the read noise by a factor of 4. Two bias voltage settings are used in these cases to provide deeper wells for the high background mode.


Array HgCdTe (Rockwell PACE)
Pixel format 2048x2048 18.5-micron pixels
Spectral Response 1 to 2.5 microns
Dark Current (imaging) 6.3 e-/s/pix
Dark Current (spectroscopy) 0.3 e-/s/pix
Read Noise (imaging) 49.5 e-/pix
Read Noise (spectroscopy) 15 e-/pix
Gain 4.5 e-/ADU
Well depth (imaging) 225,000 e-
Well depth (spectroscopy) 171,000 e-


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Last update Aug 30, 2001; Michael Ledlow