STScI Analysis Newsletter
Spectrographs Group (STIS/GHRS/FOS)
December, 2001
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This month:
Cycle 11 Phase II Update for STIS
STIS has been operating with some significant changes in its performance
since the release of the STIS Instrument Handbook (IHB) version 5.1
(July 2001). This update provides the latest information regarding STIS
performance and policies which are relevant to the preparation of Cycle 11
Phase II proposals.
The items presented here include:
Update on Charge Transfer Inefficiency of the STIS CCD
CCD Side 2 Read Noise
CCD Sensitivity Revisions
Enhanced FUV-MAMA Dark Current
Positional Accuracy of Moving Targets
ISR 2001-005: STIS CCD Read Noise During Side-2 Operations
Due to a failure of the primary (Side-1) STIS electronics, the STIS has
been operating on its redundant (Side-2) electronics since July 2001.
CCD data taken on Side 2 show an increase in effective read noise of
approximately 1 e- pix-1 for gain=1 and 0.2 e- pix-1 for gain=4. The
increased read noise manifests as a herring-bone pattern that can be seen
easily in short-exposure CCD images. When the 2-D CCD images are converted
to 1-D time series, Fourier transforms demonstrate that the read noise
patterns are temporally correlated. The frequency of the read noise
pattern ranges from 15.5 to 18 kHz, which corresponds to a spatial
frequency on the detector of approximately 3 pixels (horizontally, in
the direction of serial clocking). The gross variations in this frequency
are correlated with the temperature of the CCD housing, but the correlation
is too loose to use this temperature to predict the frequency. Simple
filtering of the data can sometimes mitigate the pattern noise, but the
filter must be carefully tuned to a narrow frequency range (tens of Hz)
centered at the precise frequency of the pattern, to avoid introducing
artifacts in the data. A code is provided to analyze and filter the
pattern noise in STIS CCD data.
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