Contents:

Warnings
Tripod
Assembling
Collapsing
Equatorial
        Wedge
Viewfinder
Mounting
Focusing
Aligning
Power Panel
Basic Info
Location
Date/Time
Slewing
Goto Option
Polar
       Alignment
Iterative
       Alignment
High Precision AO Camera

Install
       Software
Software
       Setup
Unpacking
Camera Link
Testing
Focusing
Calibrating
Taking an
      Image
Setting Up a
      Guide Star
Rotating
Self Guiding
Appendix Aggress.
Field of
      View
Dark Frame

Astronomical Adaptive Optics Demonstrator
Instruction Manual

This is a complete manual for the setup and use of the Astronomical Adaptive Optics (AO) Demonstrator. Instructions for the Meade 0.25 meter telescope are given. Details for the operation of the Santa Barbara Instrument Group (SBIG) tip-tilt AO camera are presented. It is possible that your institution will have a suitable replacement telescope, and in that case only the AO camera will be shipped to you. Two of the most important prerequisites for making the demonstrator work are achieving good polar alignment and excellent focus with the telescope. Operating the AO camera may seem difficult at first, but we have learned many tricks for getting good performance, and we outline them here. You shouldn't expect dramatic results with the tip-tilt system, only a modest improvement in full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of about 25 to 50 percent. However, this is still a significant improvement, and will make it possible to resolve binary stars only otherwise observable from excellent mountain-top sites.

1. One Meade LX200 0.25 meter, f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.
2. One Santa Barbara Instrument Group ST-7E charge-coupled-device (CCD) digital camera with an A0-7 tip-tilt module.
3. One laptop computer pre-loaded with CCDOPS, the software for operating the camera.

Assembling a Collapsed Tripod Caution: If the tripod does not seem to extend or collapse easily, do not force it. Forcing the tripod may damage the extension strut system. Stand the tripod vertically with its feet down and still fully collapsed. Open the tripod by tilting all it's weight onto one leg and pull gently on the other two until the tripod is fully extended. Thread in the 6 lock-knobs into the holes on the legs near the feet of the tripod. (two per leg). Caution: Over tightening of the lock-knobs could strip the threads or damage the tripod. Only a "firm feel" tightening is required.
Replace the spread bar (which has been removed for shipping) by first removing the rod that is threaded through the tripod head. Remove the "C" clip attached to the rod via the plastic bag. Slide the threaded rod through the spread bar (note the spread bar's "flat-side-up" orientation) and place it back to the tripod head. Place the "C" clip retainer into the slot in the thread rod. Position the three arms of the spread bar so that they align with the three legs of the tripod and maneuver the rod until it extends above the top of the tripod head.
Collapsing an Expanded Tripod for Storage Remove the telescope and equatorial wedge. Off set the spread bar so that each of its arms lie between the adjacent leg. At the base of the tripod is a 3-vaned extension strut system. Support the head of the tripod and pull directly up on the center hub of the extension struts, collapsing the tripod.

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Along the outer rim of the tripod head are two nylon set screws; remove them. Attach the tangent arm to the rim (as pictured) using the two supplied 8-32 X 1/2" socket cap screws. Place the equatorial wedge on top of the tripod so that the threaded rod passes through the center of the hole on the wedge floor. Make sure that the pin extruding from the bottom of the wedge, (called the azimuth thrust bar pin) is positioned in the slot on the tangent arm.

Screw on the manual hand knob onto the threaded end protruding from the floor of the wedge. Place the compass into the hand knob. Slide the three 5/16-18 X 1-1/4 button head screws through the clearance slots on the wedge floor and thread them to attach the wedge floor to the tripod head. Set the tilt plate to your latitude, by loosening the tilt angle adjustment screws with the Allen wrench provided. Align the vernier pointer with your latitude and retighten adjustment screws. If you do not know your latitude, enter your address here.

Note: If your latitude is greater than 55 degrees, move the locking bolts (tilt angle adjustment screws) on the tilt plate to the lower holes to provide greater access. Contents

Note: Mounting or moving the telescope requires two people to properly support it. Please get a friend to help. Make sure that the drive motor locks are undone to prevent damage to the gears and encoders. It may be required to SLIGHTLY engage the dec lock to prevent the telescope tube from swinging. On the underside of the base of the telescope are three holes for screwing it down to the tilt plate. Thread one of the three mounting socket screws into the center most of the three holes and tightening only about 3 full turns.

Check that the tilt angle adjustment screws on the equatorial wedge are firmly tightened. Lifting from the fork arms with the power panel towards you, carefully hoist the telescope on the wedge and slid the socket screw into the slot at the top of the wedge. Insert the two remaining screws into the underside of the drive base. Tighten down all 3 screws to a "firm feel." Extreme force is not necessary. Contents

• Mounting the Viewfinder.
  1. Slide the viewfinder into its bracket and lightly tighten the 6 alignment screws.
  2. Slide the viewfinder bracket into its mating base on the telescope and tighten the two thumbscrews.
• Focusing the Viewfinder
  Note: The viewfinder comes pre-focused. However, if needed:
  1. Loosen the focus lock ring.
  2. While Looking at a star, rotate the Dew Shield until the star is in focus.
     Caution: if the dew shield is rotated counterclockwise to far, it will fall off. Only a few turns should be required to refocus the viewfinder.
  3. Once focused, retighten the focus lock ring.
• Aligning the Viewfinder.
  1. Attach the 26mm eyepiece (as described below) to the telescope.
  2. Locate and center some easy to find object in the main telescope, make sure that it is at least 200 yards away.
  3. Adjust the 6 alignment screws on the viewfinder's bracket until the object is also precisely centered with the viewfinder's crosshairs.

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1. Set the N/S switch. North for north of the equator and South for south of the equator.
2. Connect the declination (DEC) motor via the 8-pin cable from the "dec motor" jack in the right arm fork to the "dec motor" jack on the power panel display.
3. Plug the keypad hand controller to the keypad connector by the standard 4-pin telephone-like cable.
4. Power up the telescope by plugging in a standard 12-18V AC adaptor into the "Power (18v DC)" jack connector.

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• Location of the Observing Site

  Locate the longitude and latitude of your observing site to an accuracy of about 1 or 2 arc minutes. You can do this by a number of ways -be it an atlas, topographical map or you could just look here. Turn telescope on. (The switch is located on the power panel.) After a few seconds, the display will look like display 1. You can move up and down the menus with the arrow keys provided on the bottom row of the keypad. Select the telescope entry by pressing ENTER. You should now see display 2. Select the site entry by pressing ENTER, leading to display 3.

  Display 3 is a list of possible site entries. Use the arrow keys to move to the first unoccupied entry. This is probably the first one. Press and hold the ENTER key until it beeps. You should now see display 4 with the first letter flashing. If you wish, rename the site entry from AAA. You may move through the title with the east and west keys and cycle through the alphabet with the up and down arrows. When you're finished, press ENTER taking you to display 5. Using the number keys, enter your latitude in degrees and minutes. Mistakes can be corrected by again moving the cursor with the east and west keys. A negative latitude can be entered by highlighting the "+" and hitting the "NEXT" key. (It's in the lower right hand corner.) When the latitude is correct, press ENTER, showing something like display 6. Enter your longitude just as above. When you're completed press ENTER, returning you to display 3. Press MODE twice to return you to display 1.

• Local Time and Date

  The local time should be set as accurately as possible, so choose your source wisely. (One possible source is here.) Turn on the telescope and wait for the handset to show display 1. (If for some reason it does not, press the MODE key until it does.) Press the MODE key twice so that the display will look something like display 7. Press and hold the ENTER key until the keypad beeps showing display 8. Using the number keys, enter your current local time within an accuracy of five seconds. Please remember to use the 24-hour (military time) format. Mistakes can be corrected by again moving the cursor with the east and west keys.

  Press ENTER when the time is correct, leading to display 9. Enter (using the number keys) the number of hours you are off from Greenwich Mean Time. US time zone shifts are listed in the table below. If you are using the LX200 east of Greenwich you must position the cursor backwards (by using the W key) on the + (plus) sign and change it to a - (minus) by pressing the NEXT key. Then enter the number of hours normally. When you're completed, press ENTER. U.S.A. Time Zones Region Hawaii Pacific Mountain Central Eastern Standard Time +10 Hours +8 Hours +7 Hours +6 Hours +5 Hours Daylight Savings Time +9 Hours +7 Hours +6 Hours +5 Hours +4 Hours You should now see display 10. Press and hold the ENTER key until the keypad beeps. The cursor should now appear over first digit of the date Now enter the current date in the MM/DD/YY format. Any errors can be corrected using the E and W keys. Press ENTER when finished. The hand controller should now display "Updating planetary data." You are now finished with entering the vital information.

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To slew the telescope, i.e. to point the telescope to a different part of the sky, is a simple matter of using the N, S, E, W buttons on the keypad (N will move the telescope north, S - south, etc).

To select different drive speeds, press one of the four buttons on the left hand side of the keypad. The current speed selected will be illuminated.

The speeds are labeled in descending order by the words: SLEW, FIND, CENTER, and GUIDE (SLEW is the fastest, GUIDE is the slowest).

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1. To make the telescope point at a specific location in the sky, press MODE until the current RA and DEC of the telescope is show.
2. Press the GOTO button so that first digit is flashing.
3. Using the numbers on the keypad and the E and W buttons to skip and correct, input the desired right ascension. When completed, press ENTER.
4. Using the numbers on the keypad, input the desired declination. To select a negative/positive declination, press E until the sign is highlighted and then press PREV/NEXT.  When finished. press ENTER. 
5. The telescope will now slew to the desired location.  However, it will not slew to a object below the horizon.

Note:  The telescope is unaware of the length and placement of the objects attached to it.  Therefore, it is quite possible that in attempting to GOTO to a given position, any equipment attached -such as an adaptive optics camera- will be knocked into the fork of the telescope.  This is extremely bad for both the telescope and camera!  When in doubt, just slew it yourself.

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Set up and shift the telescopes tripod so that the telescope's fork arm points due north. The compass set in the equatorial wedge base might prove useful in this situation or if the star Polaris is visible, sight it along the tube of the telescope. (A description for finding Polaris is here.) Note: For this procedure, Polaris must be unobstructed and visible. If for some reason Polaris cannot be view see you instruction manual for an alternate alignment procedure. Level the telescopes drive base with the bubble level set in the equatorial wedge's floor by adjusting the height of the three tripod legs, making sure the bubble is in the center of the circle.

3. Turn the power to the telescope on. (The switch is located on the power panel on the drive base.)
4. Select the following series of menu items: TELESCOPE, ALIGN, and POLAR. To maneuver the menus, use PREV and NEXT to scroll, ENTER to select an item, and MODE to abort and proceed to the previous menu.

Once the polar alignment sequence has been selected, the hand pad should display "MOVE TO DEC 90. HA 0. Press ENTER." In order to set "HA 0", you must first unlock the RA drive and then line up the following items: the hash mark on the drive base, the "00" mark on the moveable hour angle wheel and the "Vernier scale" on the base of the fork arm. Relock the RA drive. When completed, the telescope should be "upside down" with the viewfinder towards the ground (as shown.)

7. Unlock the DEC motor and swing the telescope so that the telescopes declination reads 90 and the tube of the telescope points at Polaris. Relock the Dec motor.
8. Go back to the keypad controller and press "ENTER", this will move the telescope so the viewfinder is accessible and (hopefully) Polaris is within its view.
9. Using only the azimuth and fine latitude control knobs, center Polaris.

   Note: Due to a large amount of hysteresis in the control knobs, centering Polaris is not an easy task. It may be useful to iteratively repeat this polar alignment procedure, there by each time improving the telescope's accuracy. A technique that might make this go faster is to not completely center Polaris in the telescope's view, but only go half the distance, there by decreasing the risk of "overshooting" the center.

   Also, at this point it may be a good idea to double check the declination setting circle, located at the top of the fork. When Polaris is centered, the declination should read 89.2 degrees. To adjust the circle, simply remove the knurled central hub of the Declination setting circle and slightly loosen the two bolts located under the knob. When finished, retighten the bolts and replace the knurled hub.

10. Once Polaris is centered, (or is close enough) Press ENTER. The telescope will now slew to a bright star that is high in the sky. Center the star by slewing the telescope with the N, S, E, and W keys. When completed Press ENTER. .

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The Tip-Tilt AO Camera

1. The software for running the AO camera is CCDOPS, provided by SBIG. To install, either insert the first CCDOPS disk into your floppy drive or download the latest version of CCDOPS directly from SBIG.
2. Double click on SETUP.EXE from you floppy drive or on the installation file downloaded and follow the directions presented by the installer.

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1. Start up CCDOPS.
2. From the MISC menu, select TELESCOPE SETUP...
3. Click on CALCULATE from the TELESCOPE SETUP dialogue box.
4. Select ST-7 from the CAMERA pull-down menu.
5. Input the proper APERTURE DIAMETER, OBSTRUCTION DIAMETER and F/RATIO for your telescope. Note that the diameter measurements are in inches. For the f/10 10" included here, these numbers are: 10.00, 3.7, and 10.00.
6. Click CALCULATE followed by DONE to close the FOV CALCULATOR.
7. Click OK to close the TELESCOPE SETUP menu.

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1. To protect the AO mirror, a piece of cardboard and lens cloth has been inserted in the AO module for shipping. To remove them, unscrew and remove the four long screws (as marked in Figure 1) that join the mirror assembly to the camera and the attachment elbow.
2. Carefully remove the cardboard and lens cloth.

3. Reassemble the two halves of the AO module, making sure that the cable exits on the right side of the module, (as shown in Figure 1.)
4. Attach the cable linking the AO module to the camera.

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1. In order for CCDOPS to be able to communicate with the camera and AO system a few things must first be configured. First, connect the camera module to a computer with CCDOPS installed via the printer cable provided.

2. Fire up both the computer and camera. The camera powers up only by plugging in the AC power adapter. It's on when you hear the fan.
3. To tell CCDOPS where the camera is located, open the program and select GRAPHICS/COMM SETUP... from the misc menu.
4. From within that menu, set INTERFACE to "parallel" and LPT PORT to the parallel port being used.

(Most likely that port will be LPT1. Note: If you notice horizontal streaks in your images, you might want to change the PRIORITY to medium or higher.)

5. When finished, click OK.
6. Select ESTABLISH COM LINK from the Camera menu to finally initialize the link.

1. It's a good idea to test the AO mirror's movement and make sure nothing particularly bad happened to it in transit. The CCDOPS program offers an excellent feature for doing just that. From the AO menu select EXERCISE...

2. The exercise option will move the mirror to the limits of the axis selected over the desired period of time. To test the mirror, simply observe some distant light in the mirror and activate the EXERCISE option. If the mirror moves, it's working fine.

1. It's a good idea to first obtain a rough focus with the telescope before trying to focus with the AO Camera. Only a rough focus is needed, it'll change once the camera is attached anyway. To do so, point the telescope at a rather bright star. The out of focus image should appear as a "donut" of light and get smaller as the focus is improved.
2. Attach the camera to the telescope and then power it up. Attaching the camera to the telescope is a simple matter of screwing it on, but be careful not to cross-thread the attachment ring. A helpful technique for lining them up correctly is to spin the attachment ring backwards until you feel the treads fall into place. The telescope attachment ring (as shown in Figure 1) should fit most "Schmidt-Cassegrain" telescopes. It is advisable to orientate the camera so that the flat portion is facing down and is parallel to the DEC axis of rotation.  This ensure that the top of the image is north in the field.
3. Start CCDOPS and, if it is not done automatically, select ESTABLISH COM LINK from the Camera menu. If you see the error, "you need to set a parallel port...",then do so. If you get stuck, see ESTABLISHING THE COMPUTER-CAMERA LINK above.
4. Select the SETUP command from the Camera menu to initialize the basic operational parameters of the camera (see Figure 4).

7. Select the FOCUS command from the Camera menu. What it does is automatically exposes and displays new images from the CCD, thereby allowing you to be able to see the adjustments being made.
8. To dramatically speed up the download time of each image, select "Planet" from the "frame size" field. The planet option reduces the refreshed portion from the full CCD to an area selected by the user, which speeds things up immensely.

9. Input an exposure time and for the rather bright object being observed, a .25 second exposure should be plenty (the shortest time available is .11 seconds.) A longer exposure time of course allows fainter objects to be seen but the trade off is a longer time spent focusing and less time observing. When selected, click OK.
10. The camera should now expose the entire CCD and then allow you to select the portion that will be refreshed. To do so, simply click and drag the box to the desired star (To resize the box, simply grab one of its corners.) It is recommended to select the brightest star in the field first, then later move on to a dimmer one. Click the "resume" button from the focus window, when finished.
11. Begin adjusting the focus of the telescope. An eighth to a quarter of a turn progression is recommended. Try to wait at least two images between turns, just to let things settle. Progress means the donut/star is getting smaller until it reaches a small circle.

    Each time an image is displayed, the contrast window will read out the number of counts of the brightest pixel viewed. (The number of counts is basically the amount of light falling on the pixel.) As the focus improves, more light is concentrated in a smaller area so the number of counts should increase. However, when the value reaches about 65,000 the CCD is saturated and you must now move to a fainter star in the field, (5th of 6th magnitude). Exit and restart the FOCUS command to select a fainter star. The sharpest focus will be when you get the highest average number of counts.

    Note: With most Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes, the focus knob actually moves the primary mirror and because of that it may be difficult to return to focus when overshot. Therefore it may be a good idea to approach the focus from only one direction, (i.e. turning the knob only clockwise) instead of trying to backtrack. If you do miss it, simply back up and try it again.

Note:  Images taken with the AO camera and the LX200 telescope described above are flipped E-W when viewed on the computer screen.

A few other points of note: The image size option sets the way in which the pixels are binned. (Binned meaning that an area of pixels will be average together to form a smaller, but more intense, image.) The obvious draw back of binning is that it creates a less detailed image. However, it does in effect increase the intensity of the image by concentrating the light into a smaller area. Full sized images are un-binned, medium are binned 2x2 and low are binned 4x4. Also, to take an image with the other CCD, select "switch CCDs" from the camera menu. You will always know what CCD is being used by the status bar in the lower right hand corner of the CCDOPS screen.

1. Once the AO system is attached and focused, it needs to be calibrated: Select CALIBRATE from the AO menu. The shortest exposure time allowed is .11 seconds and that should be enough for the system to calibrate, assuming the telescope is still pointed at the bright object used for focus. Otherwise, select the best exposure time for the object being observed and click OK.

   Note: If the bright star you are using has any equally bright neighbors, you might consider locating another target or else the calibrate function might get confused.

2. The AO system will now move the mirror in all for directions and record the correction speeds. The +X and -X times should be about the same, as should the ±Y numbers and all of them should be with in a factor of two. If this is so, you AO system should be properly calibrated.

The AO camera has two CCDs, one for taking the desired exposures and another for tracking the guide star so that the AO system will function.  Centering the guide star on the tracking CCD is not an easy task.   The relation between the two CCDs is that the tracking CCD is directly above the imaging CCD (see Figure 8). The appendix entry on CCD Spacing has the exact dimensions between the two.

1. The first and most important step is to obtain a solid polar alignment with the telescope, so that the tracking is phenomenal.  If the tracking is poor, this may be next to impossible.
2. Make sure the camera is rotated properly so that the top of the image is aligned with the top of the field of view, i.e. so that a slew of north will shift stars to the bottom of the image.
3. Start a FOCUS option what a short exposure time and a full frame size so that any adjustments to the location of the telescope can be see.
4. Center the chosen guide star on the imaging CCD. Slew the telescope south so that the guide star goes to the top of the image and just off the frame.
5. From the CAMERA menu select SWITCH CCDs to use the tracking CCD.
6. Again, start a FOCUS option what a short exposure time and a full frame size.
7. Slowly continue slewing south until the guide star is near the center of the tracking CCD.
8. Again select SWITCH CCDs to return to using the imaging CCD.

Contents

Unfortunately, it is often necessary to rotate the camera so that both the guide star and the object of interest can be seen by the two cameras.  This introduces an entirely new set of challenges in driving the telescope because the top of the image will no longer be north of the field.  It's really hard! When you need to rotate the camera remember these points:

1. Center the guide star first on the imaging CCD with the FOCUS option on.
2. This is a trick that helps keep the directions strait:  Keep the hand paddle in the same orientation as the camera.  That is, if the camera is rotated 45° clockwise, rotate the hand paddle 45°.  This way, you know that to drive the star up, you need equal amounts of south and east. 
3. Make small moves and always keep the guide star in the frame.  Rotate the camera a little bit, then center the guide star.  If you rotate too much, don't panic, just rotate the camera back until the star is in view.
4. If you get really lost, return the camera to the default orientation and re-center the guide star. 

Note: The camera rotates at a point between the two CCDs.

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1. Before attempting to activate the AO system with the self-guide function, it's a good idea to get a feel for how the star field looks (either by repeated observations or a finder chart) and note which way the camera will be rotated in order to properly align the guide star.
2. As described above, center the guide star.
3. When you have a guide star, it's a good idea to switch back over to the imaging CCD and take a brief exposure just to double-check that you still have the target and the focus is still sharp. Adjust as necessary.
4. If everything looks good, select SELF GUIDE from the AO menu. The menu in Figure 8a will appear, allowing you to set the exposure time to the desired value and other options. Dither will perform a double exposure, one with the AO system on and another slightly displaced with it off. The tracking box sets the area that will be refreshed on the tracking CCD as well as the point where the guide star will be centered. The smaller the tracking box, the better the frame rate; however if it's too small, the star could wander of the frame. Recommended starting parameters: a 60 second exposure with a tracking time of 0.1 second, and a medium sized track box and without dither.

   

5. Once begun, the camera will take a short tracking CCD exposure, display it and prompt you to select your guide star by placing the tracking box around it. It need not be centered, the AO system will center it on its own. Hit enter to begin the tracking.
6. Ultimately, The star will now be pulled to the center of the displayed tracking box and the guide star will be contained only in four equally bright pixels. At least, this will be the case under ideal conditions. Once things have settled down click START to begin taking the desired image. See the appendix for a discussion about aggressiveness of the AO system.

Contents

1. Before powering down the AO camera, you should do nice things to it like first allow it to come into equilibrium with the ambient temperature. Therefore, before turning off the camera for the night, select SHUTDOWN from the Camera Menu. This will slowly increase the temperature of the camera until it reaches ambient as well as opening the shutter and breaking the communications link.
2. Wait about 30 seconds before unplugging the camera.
3. Pack up the camera. If you will be using it again, you will not need to replace the lens cloth and cardboard but if you will be reshipping it, please do so.

Contents

• Aggressiveness

  The aggressiveness is how much the mirror moves for each correction; the default value is 10. An aggressiveness of 5 would move the mirror half as much. A value of 20 would move the mirror twice as much. Try to select a value that will best suppress the wander (displayed here in units of arcseconds) of the star displayed in the Guiding Dialogue. You can tell if the aggressiveness is too high when the star begins to oscillate wildly. The most probable values will be between 5 and 15 but, as with everything, play with it until an optimum is found. (The aggressiveness can be adjusted during guiding by hitting the + and ­ keys.)
  



• CCD Arrangement and Plate Scale

  One of the real tricks of actually taking a self guided image, is finding the correct position and rotation for the camera so that your bright guide star falls upon the tracking CCD while still being able to view your scientific target in the imaging CCD. There is a fine art to the centering and Figure 6 shows the size and positioning of the two CCDs relative to the camera orientation shown. Note: The camera will rotate at a point somewhere between the two CCDs.

  

  However, knowing the distance between the CCDs is only half the battle. You must also know the distance on the sky between the guide star and the scientific target. That is, you need to know the field of view (FOV) of the CCDs on the sky. This scaling is a function of the focal length of the telescope. The plate scale (S in units of radians/unit length) is

  S = 1 / f
  

  The value of  f is the focal length of the telescope. It may be helpful to remember that the focal ratio is just the ratio of the focal length to the telescope's diameter. Once the plate scale is known, it's a simple matter to obtain the FOV of the CCDs.

  A correctly scaled version of Figure 9 for an f/10 telescope is contained here in PDF format. The scale of the diagram is 1 cm=1 arcmin scale.     CCD_dim.pdf

  
  

• Dark Frame

  Like a solar cell, CCDs are able to transfer the energy received from light into an electrons. A CCD counts the number of electrons received from every pixel on the detector. However, sometimes a pixel will get enough heat energy to trigger an electron, and thus a spurious current is created even when the shutter is closed.  This is called a "dark current." To fix this, an exposure is taken of of the same exposure length as the scientific observation, but with the shutter closed. It is subtracted from the original image.

  

  

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