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

Abstract

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.

References in corpus (7)

• Detection of Planetary Transits Across a Sun-like Star
• The effect of red noise on planetary transit detection
• High accuracy transit photometry of the planet OGLE-TR-113b with a new deconvolution-based method
• The Monitor project: Data processing and lightcurve production
• Accurate radius and mass of the transiting exoplanet OGLE-TR-132b
• The impact of correlated noise on SuperWASP detection rates for transiting extra-solar planets
• A deconvolution-based algorithm for crowded field photometry with unknown Point Spread Function

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Thermalizing a telescope in Antarctica: Analysis of ASTEP observations
• ASTEP South: An Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets around the celestial South pole
• Photometric quality of Dome C for the winter 2008 from ASTEP South
• ASTEP South: An Antarctic Search for Transiting Planets around the celestial South pole