Balor Very Large Area sCMOS Camera for Astronomy

In this webinar, Product Manager Dr Colin Coates introduces Balor, Andor’s innovative Very Large Area sCMOS Camera for Astronomy.

Combining a very large 16.9 Megapixel, 70mm sensor with fast ultra-low noise readout, Balor is the perfect detector solution for large sky surveys that measure photometric and astrometric variability across timescales ranging from milliseconds to tens of seconds. Balor is the largest commercially available sCMOS camera, designed for ‘dynamic astronomy’ applications such as Orbital Debris tracking, Solar Astronomy, Solar System Object detection, Exoplanet Discovery, Atmospheric Studies and Fast Time Resolution Astrophysics. Taking only 18.5 milliseconds per full frame readout, 2500x faster than a low noise 4k x 4k CCD read, Balor can maximize SNR through use of longer exposures (between 10-60 secs) and still achieve frame cycle times much faster than CCDs, ideal for usage such as Exoplanet discovery. However, Balor can also be pushed to 54 fps while maintaining maximum field of view, suited to fast solar processes and the atmospheric freezing techniques of Lucky/Speckle Imaging.

We discussed in more detail the wide range of performance attributes of Balor, and how they relate to core application requirements across these various fields of astronomy.

Find out more about Andor’s Balor sCMOS