Bill's Amateur Astronomy

CCD Camera



Click on the picture to see a larger version.


Here is what it's all about. This is a picture of my Texas Instruments TC245-40 CCD chip. This was taken through the optical window on the front of the camera.
During the process of adding the LDC modification I decided to do a little re-engineering. Here and in the next few pictures you can see the changes made. I was having problems concerning the original design in respect to the coax cable and the ribbon cables leading from the interface box to the preamplifier on the camera. The issues I had were that the cables were to short and the whole camera was awkward to work with because the cables are always attached. Also I was always concerned with breaking a connection somewhere especially with the ribbon cable because it is very delicate. In this picture you can see that I added a little box on top of the box containing the preamp card. On this side you can see my new coax connection. Now I can easily connect and disconnect the coax during setup and disassembly. This has been a big improvement for my whole operation.
Here you can see the other side of my camera. I eliminated the two ribbon cables and used a single 25 wire Shielded Twisted Pair cable. Putting a 25 pin connecter on the extension box and making the new cable has also helped to greatly improve setup and disassembly.
Here is an inside look of my extension box. You can see how I cut a hole in the top of the bottom box and ran the wires up connected them to the appropriate connector.
Here is a top down view of the interface box. You can see the coax and STP cable connected.
Here is a top down view of the inside of my power supply. As you will see my supply is straight from the book. It even looks like the pictures in the book.
This is the a view of the right side of my power supply. The best heat sink I could find was the flat piece of aluminum that you see in the picture. This supply has worked flawlessly for me, it is a very well designed supply.
Here is a picture of the left side of my power supply.