Astronomical Laboratory 29:137, Fall 2013
by Philip Kaaret
Sections 4.3-4.5, 5.1, and 5.4 in Handbook of CCD Astronomy, second edition, by Steve B. Howell.
In this lab, you will calculate the signal to noise ratio of a
stellar brightness measurement made with a CCD cameras.
An SBIG ST-402XME camera, with power adapter and USB cable
A computer running the CCDOps software package and DS9 for image analysis
A ideal imaging detector for astronomy would record the number of
photons striking each pixel and nothing else - no counts due to
read noise or dark current. As you found in the previous
lab, the measurements produced by a CCD will also have
contributions due to noise associated with the electronics that
amplifies and digitizes the charge signal in the CCD readout (read
noise) and due to electrons released by thermal fluctuations in
the silicon (dark current). In order to measure the
brightness of a star these contributions must be measured and
subtracted off. However, since the read noise and dark
current arise due to random process, they will fluctuate and it
will never be possible to subtract them off exactly.
The standard steps in the 'reduction' of an astronomical image
are as follows:
One then ends up with a 'reduced' object image that has been
corrected for the CCD effects of bias and dark current and for
variations in the quantum efficiency across the field of the CCD
and telescope.
To do photometry on a star, one then draws a circle around the
star and sums up the counts inside the circle. Since the
night sky is not perfectly dark, one also draws an annulus
centered on the star and excluding any other stars and then
subtracts the contribution from the sky background. The
radius of the circle enclosing the star should be selected to
include most of the counts from the star, but not be so large that
it includes too much sky background. The inner radius of the
annulus should be large enough that it does not include any counts
from the star. The total area of the annulus should be a few
times larger than that of the circle.
The signal, S, from the star is the total number of net
electrons, N*, recorded by the CCD from the
star after subtraction of the bias, dark current, and sky
background. The generation of each electron is a random
process and if we take repeated measurements of the star the value
of NT will fluctuate according to a Poisson
distribution (note that we use NT instead of N*
as in the textbook). In the limit of large NT
(acutally N* > 25 is enough), the Poisson
distribution is well approximated by a Gaussian distribution and
we can describe the fluctuations in NT in terms
of a standard deviation equal to sqrt( NT).
This is true even with an ideal CCD and telescope and with zero
sky background. These instrinsic fluctations contribute a
limiting noise term σ* = sqrt( N*).
A 'bright' source is defined as one where the intrinsic noise
dominates and, thus, the signal to noise ratio, S/N, for a
measurement of the source is
S/N = N*/sqrt( N*) = 1/sqrt( N*)
The number of electrons recorded by the CCD from the dark current
and the sky background are also Poisson distributed and fluctuate
in the same way. Let's look at each pixel individually, we
write the number of dark current electrons per pixel as ND.
Even though we subtract off an estimate of this number, the
fluctuations in the number of dark current electrons remains and
adds noise per pixel, σD = sqrt(ND).
The same is true for electrons produced by the sky
background. The number of electrons per pixel from sky
background is NS and each adds noise, σS
= sqrt(NS).
The read noise, σR, is the noise associated with the
electronics that amplifies and digitizes the charge signal in the
CCD readout. Read noise is present even for zero signal and
is usually assumed to be independent of the magnitude of the
signal. Read noise will arise for each pixel in the star
image, so one needs to sum up the read noise for all the pixels in
the source extraction region.
We are then led to the question of how to add these various noise contributions. The key point is that the noise distributions are well described by Gaussian probability distributions. To combine two probability distributions, one performs a convolution. The convolution of f and g is written f∗g. It is defined as the integral of the product of the two functions after one is reversed and shifted:
The wikipedia page on convolution, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution,
has a good explanation with some nice graphics to help you get
some intuition about what convolution means and does to functions.
The convolution of two Gaussians is another Gaussian. If
the width (standard deviation) of the initial Gaussians are σ1
and σ2, then their convolution has a width σ2
= σ12 + σ2 2.
This sort of addition is called "root of sum of
squares" or "addition in quadrature". Noting that we need to sum up the noise
contributions from dark current, sky background, and read noise
for each pixel in the circle containing the star, i.e. for npix
pixels, the total noise is then:
σ2 = σT2
+ npix × (σS 2 + σD
2 + σR 2) = sqrt[NT
+ npix × (NS + ND
+ σR2)]
Contrary to what is stated in the textbook, the reason that the
read noise term appears with a square, unlike the other terms in
the expression on the right, is simply because it is a directly
measured noise, while the other terms are estimates of noise
derived from a number of electrons, e.g. σS = sqrt(NS).
Note that the noise terms are uniformly treated in the center
expression. (Also, note that 'shot noise' is another name
for 'Poisson noise', so the footnote on page 74 actually makes no
sense.) The signal to noise equation for CCDs or the "CCD
equation" is then:
S/N = N*/sqrt[NT + npix × (NS + ND + σR2)]
In the previous lab, you measured the read noise of the SBIG
ST-402 and how the dark current depends on temperature and
exposure time. In this lab, you will use the images that you
obtained of Vega to estimate the sky background and the signal
level from stars and you will use the dark frames to estimate the
dark current. Using this information, you will then plot how
the S/N depends on various parameters.
Now let's calculate the S/N of your detection of your selected
star. You just calculated values for NT ,
NS, and ND in counts.
Recall that you need to convert these to electrons. Use the
gain of the CCD (that you can readoff using CCDOps or get from
your write-up of the last lab) to do this conversion. In
choosing the radius of the circle that you used to extract counts
for the star, you picked npix .
Use your value for the read noise, σR2, from
the previous lab. Record your calculations and your results
in your lab notebook. Which component of the noise
dominates?
Now inspect your sky image and find a much dimmer star, one of
the dimmest that you can see. Repeat the process above,
ending up with a pair of plots (as above) for the dimmer
star.
Put printouts of your four plots in your lab notenook and write
some discussion comparing them with figure 5.6 and the upper panel
of figure 5.7 in the textbook.