Observatoire de l'Institut d'Optique Graduate School
Antenne de Saint Etienne

Planetary imaging using
high frame rate
Hamamatsu digital camera C9300-201

The author thanks Hamamatsu France and especially Sébastien Bouilhol
for the loan of this CCD camera.
I thank also my colleague Eddy Charles who helped me for the installation.

Summary
Experimental set-up
Specifications of the camera
Moon

Experimental set-up

The loan was of limited duration and the tests were conducted under conditions where the seeing was rather poor. The principal advantage of this camera is to make it possible to acquire AVIs of several thousands of images over short durations (25 s for 2000 i at 80 i/s), during which the variations of turbulence are minimized.

Specifications of the camera
All is here.
The main features are :
- high speed readout, up to 150 i/s for dual readout and 1x1 binning, and up to 85 i/s for single readout and 1x1 binning,
- low readout noise ~ 20 e,
- 12 bit output for single images.

During these tests, we tried to image the Moon, Mars and Saturn. Unfortunately, the turbulence was always strong and the images of Mars and Saturn are too bad to be presented here  : - (
Here thus are our lunar images and I let to you imagine what they would have been if the seeing had been good...

Moon

Copernic
Diameter = 93 km, Depth = 3760 m, Central peaks/Height = 1200 m

 

Moon : 10-day-old
Poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 150 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Erathostenes
Diameter = 58 km, Depth = 3570 m

 

Moon : 10-day-old
Poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 150 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Clavius
 Diameter = 225 km

 

Moon : 10-day-old
Poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 150 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Archimedes
 Diameter = 83 km, Depth = 2150 m

 

Moon : 10-day-old
Poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 150 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Aristillus
Diameter = 55 km, Depth = 3650 m, Central peaks/Height = 900 m 

 

Moon : 10-day-old
Poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 150 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Tycho
Diameter = 85 km, Depth = 4850 m, Central peaks/Height = 1600 m

 

Moon : 10-day-old
Poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 150 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Moretus
Diameter = 114 km

 

Moon : 10-day-old
Poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 150 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

South pole

 

Moon : 14-day-old
VERY poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 84 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Schomberger
Diameter = 85 km
Scott
Diameter = 108 km
Amundsen
Diameter = 100 km

 

Moon : 14-day-old
VERY poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 84 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Demonax
Diameter = 114 km

 

Moon : 14-day-old
VERY poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 84 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Boussingault
Diameter = 131 km
 Helmholtz
Diameter = 95 km
 Neumayer
Diameter = 76 km

 

Moon : 14-day-old
VERY poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 84 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

Neper
Diameter = 142 km

 

Moon : 14-day-old
VERY poor seeing
C14 + AP 1200 GTO
Powermate Televue 2.5 x
IR block Baader
Hamamatsu C9300-201 at 84 i/s
 0.16''/pixel or 300 m/pixel
Stack of 500 frames processed with Registax
Thierry Lépine
Ecole Supérieure d’Optique
Saint Etienne – France

 

To join us :
thierry dot lepine at institutoptique dot fr (anti-spam)