Front- vs. back-illuminated CCD cameras for photometric surveys: a noise budget analysis

• Main Authors: Crouzet, Nicolas, Guillot, Tristan, Fressin, Francois, Blazit, Alain
• Other Authors: Laboratoire de Cosmologie, Astrophysique Stellaire & Solaire, de Planétologie et de Mécanique des Fluides (CASSIOPEE), Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Université Côte d'Azur (UCA)-Université Côte d'Azur (UCA)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Gemini (LG), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Laboratoire Hippolyte Fizeau (FIZEAU)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2007
• Subjects: [PHYS.ASTR.CO]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]/Cosmology and Extra-Galactic Astrophysics [astro-ph.CO]; [SDU.ASTR]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]; [PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-INS-DET]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00324016; https://hal.science/hal-00324016/document; https://hal.science/hal-00324016/file/ProceedingBudapest.pdf

International audience Exoplanetary transit and stellar oscillation surveys require a very high precision photometry. The instrumental noise has therefore to be minimized. First, we perform a semi-analytical model of different noise sources. We show that the noise due the CCD electrodes can be overcome using a Gaussian PSF (Point Spread Function) of full width half maximum larger than 1.6 pixels. We also find that for a PSF size of a few pixels, the photometric aperture has to be at least 2.5 times larger than the PSF full width half maximum. Then, we compare a front- with a back-illuminated CCD through a Monte-Carlo simulation. Both cameras give the same results for a PSF full width half maximum larger than 1.5 pixels. All these simulations are applied to the A STEP (Antarctica Search for Transiting Extrasolar Planets) project. As a result, we choose a front-illuminated camera for A STEP because of its better resolution and lower price, and we will use a PSF larger than 1.6 pixels.