Modern UV detectors for small aperture space mission to study comets

Abstract

A small dedicated UV telescope with a modern detector can obtain a lot of new information to study comets in the UV range, which is inaccessible for ground telescopes. We discuss the latest trends in UV-optimized CMOS and CCD detectors that can improve the efficiency of a small aperture (20 cm) space burn UV telescope. The improvements of classical CCD are moving toward improving quantum efficiency in UV, development of the new anti-reflection coatings and multilayer UV filters with enhanced red leak suppression. CMOS with a very small pixel (3-5μm) of more than 20 Mpixel format allows to improve sampling and to increase the price/performance ratio of a small aperture telescope.