Are dedicated AP camera's full spectrum?

[Trippelforge]

While looking through various camera's I am coming across graphs showing the wave lengths of each. The one thing that stands out to me is how some are being listed between 400-1000nm. Which obviously does not allow the capability of gathering UV light. My entire thought process revolved around dedicated camera's having "naked" sensors. Which I based off of the fact that removing filters is one of the reasons people modify their DSLR's, in particular UV/IR. How does it really work, I assume I am completely confused!

 

 

[wulfrun]

I'll have a stab at an answer, with a question...what's "full spectrum" mean anyway? You could argue LF-radio to hard X-ray is "full spectrum" but no sensor does that. It depends on the context, in this case it means near-infra-red plus all visible. The atmosphere filters out the majority of UV-and-up anyway, so it's not much use in a ground-based sensor.

EDIT: not well up on this, but don't most astro-mods alter or remove the red/infra-red filters?

Edited November 9, 2022 by wulfrun

[DaveS]

The cut off at 400 nm is because most optical systems are not well corrected in the deep blue, similarly for the 750 nm IR cut off. Solar imagers who work with the CaK line are in the very near UV at 398 nm, but they are using a very tight bandwidth so the "blue bloat" that can afflict deep blue RGB imaging doesn't apply. 

[Adam J]

16 hours ago, Trippelforge said:

While looking through various camera's I am coming across graphs showing the wave lengths of each. The one thing that stands out to me is how some are being listed between 400-1000nm. Which obviously does not allow the capability of gathering UV light. My entire thought process revolved around dedicated camera's having "naked" sensors. Which I based off of the fact that removing filters is one of the reasons people modify their DSLR's, in particular UV/IR. How does it really work, I assume I am completely confused!

 

 

DSLR have two filters that in the case of canon at least can be removed to allow full spectrum operation (350nm - 850nm) hence full spectrum = limited by only the sensor and not restricted by any filters. 

In terms of dedicated cameras some OSC will be full spectrum and some will come with a UV/IR or IR only Cut on their optical window, you need to read the fine print to know for sure. In the case of mono cameras they are almost universally full spectrum. 

 

Adam