Since 2004, at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Toulouse Tarbes (LATT), we work with CMOS APS
detectors, firstly to develop a large-field,high-resolution camera
for the observation of the solar supergranulation, secondly
to develop a fast camera for an adaptive optics test bench.
In these two projects, we use detectors from FillFactory, now continued by
Cypress Semiconductor Corporation: IBIS4-14000, IBIS-16000, LUPA-4000,
14 Mpixels, 16 Mpixels, 4 Mpixels respectively. The last one just reads
in a 240 × 240 pixels window to obtain readout rate of 1000 Image/s.
For these purposes we developed dedicated controllers to follow
the high pixel rate and multi-output readout of this type of detectors.
We also studied the characterization methods and measured
the main parameters of these CMOS detectors to know their behaviour. Using
these kinds of APS detectors in these two particular projects proves
that we can already find niches to use CMOS detectors in astronomy taking
advantage of their present specificities. Recent improvements like
back illumination, noise reduction, should rapidly open news possibilities.