Optical Photon Counting Imaging Detectors with Nanosecond Time Resolution for Astronomy and Night Time Sensing

Microchannel plate photon counting, imaging sensors with cross strip readouts having 18 mm active area format in sealed tube (optical sensing) configurations have been constructed. These have been tested with custom high-speed field programmable gate array based electronics for single event position and time encoding. The Super-GenII photocathodes used have response from 400 nm to 900 nm and peak quantum efficiency of between 16% and 19% at 500 nm. This sensor system achieves spatial resolution of ~30 μm FHWM (at gains of ~ 10). The encoding electronics can process high event rates (> 6 MHz input rates), and has event timing accuracy of better than ~1 ns. Local area counting rates of up to 40 kHz (100 μm spot) have been attained and image linearity and stability are better than 50 μm.