Design of a Nonvacuum-Cooling Compact CCD Camera for Scientific Detection

In this article, a nonvacuum-cooling compact (NVCC) scientific charge-coupled device (CCD) camera is presented that includes low noise clocks, a bias driver circuit, a data acquisition circuit, and a temperature control circuit. Experiments are conducted to test the readout performance of the proposed imaging system. The scheme for generating the CCD clocks and the bias driver circuit through ultralow noise low-dropout regulators is designed. The entire design can operate from -40 °C to 40 °C. The test results of the camera show that the system can run at a maximum readout rate of 5 Mpixels/s. The readout noise of the camera is as low as 9.29 e
^-
when the readout speed is 500 Kpixels/s. The designed camera is currently used in a 1.2-m telescope system at Delingha Observatory.