The CCD imaging systems for LAMOST

The CCD imaging systems for the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) are being designed and built in the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC). LAMOST is to be equipped with 16 low-resolution spectrographs (LRS) with a total 32 CCD cameras. Each CCD camera consists of a LN2 cooling system, a CCD controller and a large-format scientific-grade CCD with 4K*4K pixels, two output registers and four output amplifiers. The CCD controller enables low readout noise, photometric stability and software-selectable switching from single- to four- output amplifier readout modes. The whole 32 CCD cameras need to be communicated with several network-connected computers. The computer cluster allows synchronized processes of accumulation and readout of CCD systems and rapid, reliable data transfer from CCD cameras. We introduce the current design of above components as well as its performance. And the design schedule of the CCD imaging systems for LAMOST is reported.