High-precision measurement of pixel positions in a charge-coupled device

The high level of spatial uniformity in modern CCD’s makes them excellent devices for astrometric instruments. However, at the level of accuracy envisioned by the more ambitious projects such as the Astrometric Imaging Telescope, current technology produces CCD’s with significant pixel registration errors. We describe a technique for making high-precision measurements of relative pixel positions. We measured CCD’s manufactured for the Wide Field Planetary Camera II installed in the Hubble Space Telescope. These CCD’s are shown to have significant step-and-repeat errors of 0.033 pixel along every 34th row, as well as a 0.003-pixel curvature along 34-pixel stripes. The source of these errors is described. Our experiments achieved a per-pixel accuracy of 0.011 pixel. The ultimate shot-noise limited precision of the method is less than 0.001 pixel.