THE NEW KODAK KAF-3200ME

CCD SENSOR

The Kodak KAF-3200ME Non-Antiblooming (NABG)  sensor

At the time of the purchase, my old ST-7 was delivered with a Kodak KAF-400 Antiblooming sensor. The CCD sensor is constituted of a small grid with pixels. These pixels receive light from the sky. When the pixels are full, the picture is characterized  by blooming on the brighter stars. To avoid it, an Antiblooming grid is applied on the CCD sensor. It permits to evacuate the excess charges. The problem is that this Antiblooming system reduces the sensitivity of the CCD of 40%. It is very significant if you take, as me, some pictures about galaxies. The Antiblooming generates more noise in the pictures, especially on the objects with a low magnitude.

But in 1999, Kodak sold on the market a new KAF serie sensors: more sensitive in the blue spectrum and in the visible spectrum. Its sensitivity is so extraordinary that it is sold essentially in Non-Antiblooming. The ST-10XME is sold with the KAF-3200ME sensor only in Non-Antiblooming. So, no problem of choice with the ST-10XME. But SBIG sells 2 models of the ST-10, the ST-10XE and the ST-10XME. The ST-10XE has a QE of 65% but the ST-10XME has some microlenses on the chip and increase the QE over 85%.

It is necessary to know a Non-Antiblooming sensor will be more linear that an Antiblooming sensor. A better choice for the photometry measures.

Below you can see the different size of detectors SBIG uses in the ST CCD cameras series :

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