Santa Barbara Instrument Group STL-1001E Operating Manual page 51

Section 4 – Camera Hardware
twice the signal to noise you would have to increase the exposure 4 times. An
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STL-11000M with its full well capacity of 50,000e could produce an image with a
S/N in excess of 200!
Antiblooming – Some SBIG CCD cameras have antiblooming protection. The TC-237
autoguider has antiblooming built into the CCDs. The Kodak CCDs used in the
STL-1301E and STL-6303E have Antiblooming versions of the CCDs available
and the CCDs used in the ST-4020M and STL-11000M only come with
antiblooming. Blooming is a phenomenon that occurs when pixels fill up. As
charge continues to be generated in a full pixel, it has to go somewhere. In CCDs
without antiblooming protection the charge spills into neighboring pixels,
causing bright streaks in the image. With the CCDs used in the SBIG cameras
the excess charge can be drained off saturated pixels by applying clocking to the
CCD during integration. This protection allows overexposures of 100-fold
without blooming. The trade off is sensitivity. Antiblooming CCDs are less
sensitive than non-antiblooming CCDs. In the case of the STL-1302E and STL-
6303E, for example, the non-antiblooming versions are very roughly twice as
sensitive. The CCDs used in the STL1001E do not come in an antiblooming
version.
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