CCD Imager Development for Astronomy

Charge-coupled-device (CCD) technology has played a major role over the past two decades in various Lincoln Laboratory applications involving space surveillance. The important performance metrics for those programs include high quantum efficiency, low-noise readout circuits, and large pixel counts. The Advanced Imaging Technology Group has developed over a period of many years a leading-edge capability in all these areas. The same detector features that are important to space surveillance are likewise eagerly sought by astronomers, and for the past twelve years we have been engaged in various programs to make our CCD technology available to several observatories. These programs have had a reciprocal benefit to us by supporting development of novel device concepts and supplying us with comprehensive test data that we otherwise would not have the resources to obtain. This article reviews our work in imager development for astronomy, with special emphasis on a new CCD architecture called the orthogonal transfer array. This device will be featured in a gigapixel focal-plane array now in assembly for the first of four telescopes in a wide-field survey observatory called Pan-STARRS.