Closeup on the Kodak 1602 CCD chip

We will be using an SBIG ST-8E camera, which employs a Kodak KAF 1602 CCD chip.

What is the size of one pixel of the camera, in microns?
Our 12-inch telescope has a focal length of 120 inches = 3.048 meters. If this camera is placed at the focal point of the telescope, how many arcseconds will each pixel subtend?
The typical size of the seeing disk in Rochester is around 5 arcseconds. How big will the blurry image of a star appear in an image taken with this camera?

Our camera has a parallel port interface to a computer. Data can be transferred from camera to computer at a rate of about 70,000 bytes per second. This is much, much slower than modern USB transfer rates ...

How long will it take to transfer a single image from camera to computer?

So, by default, this camera has two drawbacks when used on our telescope and connected to our computers: it oversamples the point-spread function, so that stars are giant blurry blobs, and it takes a long, long time to transfer each image to the computer. Is there any way to reduce these annoying problems?











           YES!  One can BIN the image

To "bin" an image means that one creates a smaller copy from the original, by combining adjacent pixels into single "superpixels."

If the original image is oversampled, then binning doesn't really remove much (or any) information, and it DOES make the image much smaller.

I usually bin the images from our camera 3x3 before reading them out.

How big (in pixels) will the binned output image be?
How large will each "superpixel" appear in the binned image, in arcseconds?
How big will the typical seeing disk appear in the binned image?
How long will it take to transfer this binned image to the computer?

For more information

You can find a copy of the entire spec sheet for this device at
- PDF copy of KAF1602 spec sheet

Interested in checking the occultation of Regulus on Mar 19/20?
- All you need is an eye and a watch
- Guide to observing the event from IOTA
- Did you try to observe the event? If you did, and you could see Regulus at the proper time, then please fill out a report, whether you saw an occultation or not.