Microbolometer arrays for ground-based infrared imaging

Maisie F. Rashman; Iain A. Steele; Stuart D. Bates; Johan H. Knapen; David Copley

doi:10.1117/12.2559465

13 December 2020 Microbolometer arrays for ground-based infrared imaging

Maisie F. Rashman, Iain A. Steele, Stuart D. Bates, Johan H. Knapen, David Copley

Proceedings Volume 11447, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy VIII; 1144796 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2559465
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2020, Online Only

Conference Poster

Abstract

Mid-infrared observations are a vital tool for the study of a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. However, ground-based mid-infrared detectors must overcome the challenge of the overwhelming thermal background from sky and telescope emissions making them prohibitively costly for smaller (< 3 m) facilities. We describe the design and testing of a simple prototype, low-cost 10 µm imaging instrument built around an uncooled microbolometer camera. The instrument incorporates adjustable germanium re-imaging optics to rescale the image to an appropriate plate-scale for 1−2 m class telescopes and uses a gold coated chopping mirror to remove overwhelming sky background contributions. The instrument was tested with a programme of observations of bright mid-infrared sources on the 2 m Liverpool Telescope and the 1.52 m Carlos Sanchez Telescope. With these observations we confirm the instrument can be used for diffraction-limited imaging and has a photometric stability of ~10 %. We report an in-practice sensitivity limit of ~600 Jy, and a theoretical sensitivity limit of ∼ 450 Jy based on the noise equivalent differential temperature of the microbolometer system.

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Maisie F. Rashman, Iain A. Steele, Stuart D. Bates, Johan H. Knapen, and David Copley "Microbolometer arrays for ground-based infrared imaging", Proc. SPIE 11447, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy VIII, 1144796 (13 December 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2559465

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