Small-field astrometry has taken advantage of the progress achieved by the CCD technology, especially in the field of quantum efficiency enhancement and of the production of very large devices.
Furthermore, the improvement in the design and manufacturing of scientific CCD controllers has greatly enhanced the overall performances of CCD systems. State of the art controllers are able to operate a wide variety of CCDs and more importantly, they are able to readout simultaneously from two or four outputs so as to reduce the time to read the whole image.
As a consequence of that, CCD astrometric observations have increased both in quantity and in quality.
We are currently designing a CCD camera system to be placed at the 61 cm Schmidt telescope of the Catania Astrophysical Observatory on Mount Etna. The camera will perform astrometric observations and wide band photometric observations of minor objects of the solar system and in particular of near earth objects (NEO).
The CCD detector will be operated using the CCD controller developed for the italian national telescope "Galileo".
Here we report on the preliminary design and on the expected performances of the system
