Scientific CMOS (sCMOS) is a breakthrough technology that offers an advanced set of performance features that renders it ideal to high fidelity, quantitative scientific measurement. The multi-megapixel sensors offer a large field of view and high resolution, without compromising read noise, dynamic range or frame rate.

Balor sCMOS

Balor is Andor’s game-changing, very large area sCMOS camera platform for Astronomy, the perfect solution for Large Sky Surveys that measure photometric and astrometric variability across timescales ranging from milliseconds to tens of seconds.

16.9 Megapixel / 70mm sensor – large sky surveys
54 fps full frame – fast solar dynamics/fast moving object
Low read noise – detect weak signal/small objects
Extended Dynamic Range – across range of object brightness/sizes
Minimal down time - vacuum longevity and quality: no moisture.

Download Specs

Balor is Andor’s game-changing, very large area sCMOS camera platform for Astronomy. It launches with the Balor 17-12 model, featuring an enhanced FoV 16.9 Megapixel, 70mm diagonal sensor, coupled with fast, low noise readout capability. Balor is ideal for measuring photometric and astrometric variability from milliseconds to tens of seconds timescales.

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. Balor lends itself particularly well to the ‘atmospheric freezing’ techniques of Speckle/Lucky Imaging, enabling resolution enhancement of ground-based astronomy over a much larger field of view than is readily achievable through use of adaptive optics.

Balor combines 2.9 e- read noise with an exceptionally fast 18.5 millisecond readout, allowing up to 54fps full frame readout, perfect for studying solar or atmospheric dynamics. The faster readout capability, 2500x faster than CCDs, also renders Balor superb for exoplanet discovery, radically compressing measurement cycle times and allowing more time to instead be spent capturing scarce photons.

Balor outperforms in the area of quantitative photometric measurement. Complimented by a market-leading linearity of > 99.7%, the large 12 µm pixels offer an 80,000 electron well depth and an on-chip multi-amplifier design means the whole photometric range, from the noise floor up to the saturation limit, can be captured with one image. Such capability is ideal for photometric accuracy of light curve measurement across high dynamic range object fields.

Balor delivers both Rolling Shutter and Global (Snapshot) Shutter exposure modes. The latter can be useful for applications where every pixel across the array must carry the same relative exposure timing correlation, relative to an external timestamp.

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