SHARC II: a Caltech submillimeter observatory facility camera with 384 pixels
- 1 February 2003
- proceedings article
- Published by SPIE-Intl Soc Optical Eng
- Vol. 4855, 73-88
- https://doi.org/10.1117/12.459360
Abstract
SHARC II is a background-limited 350 μm and 450 μm facility camera for the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory undergoing commissioning in 2002. The key component of SHARC II is a 12 × 32 array of doped silicon 'pop-up' bolometers developed at NASA/Goddard. Each 1 mm × 1 mm pixel is coated with a 400 Ω/square bismuth film and located λ/4 above a reflective backshort to achieve >75% absorption efficiency. The pixels cover the focal plane with >90% filling factor. At 350 μm, the SHARC II pixels are separated by 0.65 λ/D. In contrast to the silicon bolometers in the predecessor of SHARC II, each doped thermistor occupies nearly the full area of the pixel, which lowers the 1/f knee of the detector noise to -1/2 or better. The new camera should be at least 4 times faster at detecting known point sources and 30 times faster at mapping large areas compared to the prior instrument.Keywords
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