Development and calibration of the Moon-based EUV camera for Chang'e-3

Abstract

The process of development and calibration for the first Moon-based extreme ultraviolet (EUV) camera to observe Earth's plasmasphere is introduced and the design, test and calibration results are presented. The EUV camera is composed of a multilayer film mirror, a thin film filter, a photon-counting imaging detector, a mechanism that can adjust the direction in two dimensions, a protective cover, an electronic unit and a thermal control unit. The center wavelength of the EUV camera is 30.2 nm with a bandwidth of 4.6 nm. The field of view is 14.7° with an angular resolution of 0.08°, and the sensitivity of the camera is 0.11 count s-1 Rayleigh-1. The geometric calibration, the absolute photometric calibration and the relative photometric calibration are carried out under different temperatures before launch to obtain a matrix that can correct geometric distortion and a matrix for relative photometric correction, which are used for in-orbit correction of the images to ensure their accuracy.