The QUEST Large Area CCD Camera

We have designed, constructed, and put into operation a very large area CCD camera that covers the field of view of the 1.2 m Samuel Oschin Schmidt Telescope at the Palomar Observatory. The camera consists of 112 CCDs arranged in a mosaic of four rows with 28 CCDs each. The CCDs are 600 × 2400 pixel Sarnoff thinned, back‐illuminated devices with 13 μm × 13 μm pixels. The camera covers an area of 4.6° × 3.6° on the sky with an active area of 9.6 deg2. This camera has been installed at the prime focus of the telescope and commissioned, and scientific‐quality observations on the Palomar‐QUEST Variability Sky Survey were started in 2003 September. The design considerations, construction features, and performance parameters of this camera are described in this paper.