In 2018, New Imaging Technologies successfully developed a Scientific deep cooled SWIR Camera, dedicated to Scientific applications such as Astronomy and Medical SWIR imaging.
After several years of development, a first prototype was used last summer in a real Telescope (at ‘Pic du Midi’) for planet observations.
Today, NIT bring us the first results of the Scientific deep cooled SWIR camera based on NIT InGaAs Detector. Saturn, Mars, Orion nebula and others stars were captured thanks to this Scientific HDR SWIR camera.
Saturn captured in J filter (1250nm with 200nm bandwidth)
Courtesy of LPA/Le2i/S2P, IMCCE
Mars captured with J filters (1250nm with 200nm bandwidth)
Courtesy of LPA/Le2i/S2P, IMCCE
Orion nebula images acquired with Hubble space telescope in visible & large band SWIR region. Courtesy of LPA/Le2i/S2P, IMCCE
Orion nebula images taken with the SWIR scientific camera in the 900nm -1700nm band with atmosphere perturbation. Courtesy of LPA/Le2i/S2P, IMCCE
NIT SWIR cameras are designed to face highly challenging environments, robustly dealing with applications where there is a level of vibration, as well as a wide range of temperatures.
This technology creates a powerful solution to numerous applications and differs from thermal imaging which relies on radiated photon detection;
- Imaging though fog/haze/atmosphere; fire, drizzle, gas/steam, atmospheric haze.
- Detecting foreign bodies/contaminants; clear separation of object types otherwise undefinable to a visible camera
- Water/moisture; highly absorbent in SWIR which means it will appear much darker than other liquid/objects in the scene
- Classification/detection of chemicals; chemicals absorb light in the SWIR range and so what may look a clear liquid in visible light, will have a defined gray-value in SWIR
Industries benefiting from this technology also include Security/Surveillance, Food and Agriculture, Object/Material sorting, Textiles and more.
All WiDy (Wide Dynamic) SWIR camera series from NIT are supplied with application software enabling live image acquisition, Raw and AVI video recordings and ease-of-use camera synchronisation. Combine with world leading image processing software , MVTec’s HALCON, to create powerful automation solutions.