Specifications

AUTOSTAR CCD PHOTOMETRY 39
Figure A-5. Standard UBVRI Johnson-Cousins
Photometry Filter Passbands.
Cooling the DSI Pro
The DSI series cameras use ambient air cooling. The camera case
is equipped with an internal “cold finger” that transmits heat from
the CCD chip to the backplate, which acts as an efficient heat
exchanger. With cool night time temperatures, these units perform
well. However, Dark Frames must still be created and subtracted
from each image to get rid of “hot” pixels and thermal noise.
During the summer months in Phoenix, Arizona observatory
temperatures can approach 100°F (38°C) at midnight. At those
temperatures, even subtracting dark frames does not work well.
Adding cooling to the DSI Pro started as an experiment at HPO to
see what could be done at minimum cost and the least amount of
modification.