Understanding of the basic characteristics of an astronomical instrument is a prerequisite to obtaining reliable data from the instrument. We have analyzed more than 1,000 calibration images from the Fairchild 486 CCD (hereafter the Maidanak 4k CCD system) attached to the AZT-22 1.5m telescope at Maidanak Astronomical Observatory in Uzbekistan. The Maidanak 4k CCD system supports three readout modes through 1, 2, or 4 amplifiers. In most cases observers use 4-amplifier readout mode to save time. We have tested the stability and seasonal variation of zero levels and confirm that two quadrants of the images (Amp 1 & 2) show no appreciable seasonal variation. but the other two quadrants (Amp 3 & Amp 4) show an evident seasonal variation in the bias level. The Cryo Tiger, the cooling system used at the Maidanak 4k CCD system, maintains the CCD temperature at -108'E, and effectively suppresses the dark electrons. The mean value versus the variance plot of the flat images does not show the expected relation for an ideal Poisson noise distribution and this is attributed to the large variation in quantum efficiency between different pixels. In addition, we confirm that there is no appreciable difference in gain between readout amplifiers, but there is a large variation in quantum efficiency across CCD chip especially in U. Due to the finite length of shutter opening and closing time, the effective exposure time varies across the science images. We introduce two parameters to quantify the effect of this uneven illumination and present a method to remove these effects. We also present a method to remove the interference patterns appearing in the images obtained with longer wavelength filters and investigate the spatial variation of the point spread function.

We have been developing a solar observing system based on a fast CCD camera 1M30P made by the DALSA company. Here we examine and present the characteristics and performance of the camera. For this we have analyzed a number of images of a flat wall illuminated by a constant light source. As a result we found that in the default operating mode 1) the mean bias level is 49 ADU/pix, 2) the mean dark current is about 8 ADU /s/pix, 3) the readout noise is 1.3 ADU, and 4) the gain is about 42 electrons/ ADU. The CCD detector is found to have a linearity with a deviation smaller than 6%, and a uniform sensitivity better than 1%. These parameters will be used as basic inputs in the analysis of data to be taken by the camera.

The characteristics of the BOES (Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph) CCD camera is presented. In order to get optimum gain and readout noise of the CCD, we examine the variation of the gain and readout noise by changing the value of output drain voltage of the CCD and measuring the gain using transfer curve, which is defined as the plot of variance versus mean exposure level of a homogeneous light onto the CCD surface. The gain and readout noises are optimised to be 0.5e −/ADU and 3e−, which is good for highest signal-to-noise ratio and contrast for the low light level characteristics of the BOES. We also measure the dark count of the CCD by getting five dark images with 3600 seconds exposure time. The mean dark count from median stacked dark images is essentially zero. A table of positions of defected pixels is also presented.

We present the characteristics of the 2K CCD camera at the Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory of the Korea Astronomy Observatory at the time of its development. The purpose of this paper is to support the observers who may need detailed information on the characteristics of the camera and to provide helpful information on the optimization' of a CCD camera for those who try to develop their own camera. The 2K CCD camera was optimized to have a gain of 1.8e−/ADU and a read out noise of 7e− from an experiment using radioactive 55 Fe X-ray source. The charge transfer efficiency was measured as 0.9999976 for serial and 0.9999942 for parallel direction, which means 0.5% charge loss along the serial direction and 1.2% along the parallel direction across the chip. The quantum efficiency of the camera was measured from an experiment using a homogeneous light source consisting of a halogen lamp and an integrating sphere with a monochromator. The resulting quantum efficiency of the camera peaked at the wavelength range 600-700 nm with the value of ＼-0.89 .