What is a CCD?
But for astronomy, CCDs have several advantages over film, the chief being that they are much more sensitive than film and therefore can be used to photograph celestial objects too faint to record on film. (An example of this is the famous Hubble Deep Field image, which captured thousands of extremely distant galaxies too faint to be recorded with film.) Another advantage of CCDs is that while film has to be processed and developed chemically, CCD sensors can be read directly by a computer and the image transmitted by wire or radio. That capability has made possible remotely operated and spaceborne telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope. It would have been impractical for the Hubble to shoot rolls of film that then had to be developed (and sent back to Earth); instead its CCD sensors are read by its onboard computers and the images transmitted electronically to Earth as soon as they are taken. For these reasons and a number of others, CCD sensors are the basis of all modern opti
Fundamentally, a charge coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit etched onto a silicon surface forming light sensitive elements called pixels. Photons incident on this surface generate charge that can be read by electronics and turned into a digital copy of the light patterns falling on the device. CCDs come in a wide variety of sizes and types and are used in many applications from cell phone cameras to high-end scientific applications. Shown above are various CCDs, the largest is mounted on a 6″ wafer and is used in some of Spectral Instrument’s products. The function of a CCD can be visualized as an array of buckets (pixels) collecting rainwater (photons). Each bucket in the array is exposed for the same amount of time to the rain. The buckets fill up with a varying amount of water, and the CCD is then read one bucket at a time. This process is initiated by pouring water into the adjacent empty column. The buckets in this column transfer their ‘water’ down to a final pixel wher
Many camcorders will list CCD as one of the camcorders specs. The CCD in your camera has a huge effect on the quality of the video you can record with your new camcorder. Understanding what a CCD is and how it works will help you be better prepared to purchase the best camcorder for you. What is a CCD? The phrase CCD stands for charge-couple-device. The CCD is essentially a chip inside your camcorder that determines the brightness of your camcorders picture and the brilliance of the colors it records. How are CCD s measured? CCDs are generally talked about in terms of size. The larger the CCD your camcorder has, the better. The larger the CCD is the more light it will be able to take in, and the brighter the picture will look. Most consumer camcorders will have a 1/6 to a 1/3-inch CCD. Professional camcorders used by news crews and the like usually have 1/2 inch CCDs. A small difference in the size of the CCD in your camcorder can make a HUGE difference in the quality of your video, so
CCD stands for Charge Coupled Device. It is one of the two main types of image sensors used in digital cameras. When a picture is taken, the CCD is struck by light coming through the camera’s lens. Each of the thousands or millions of tiny pixels that make up the CCD converts this light into electrons. The number of electrons, usually described as the pixel’s accumulated charge, is measured, and then converted into a digital value.
