Wilbur: A low-cost CCD camera system for MDM Observatory

The recent availability of several 'off-the-shelf' components, particularly CCD control electronics from SDSU, has made it possible to put together a flexible CCD camera system at relatively low cost and effort. The authors describe Wilbur, a complete CCD camera system constructed for the Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT Observatory. The hardware consists of a Loral 2048(exp 2) CCD controlled by the SDSU electronics, an existing dewar design modified for use at MDM, a Sun Sparcstation 2 with a commercial high-speed parallel controller, and a simple custom interface between the controller and the SDSU electronics. The camera is controlled from the Sparcstation by software that provides low-level I/O in real time, collection of additional information from the telescope, and a simple command interface for use by an observer. Readout of the 2048(exp 2) array is complete in under two minutes at 5 e(sup -) read noise, and readout time can be decreased at the cost of increased noise. The system can be easily expanded to handle multiple CCD's/multiple readouts, and can control other dewars/CCD's using the same host software.