The ARGOS wavefront sensor pnCCD camera for an ELT: characteristics, limitations and applications

While a large visible fast low-noise detector for a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SH WFS) for an ELT does not exist yet, the current CCD technology pushed to its limits already provides several solutions for the ELT AO detector requirements. One of these devices is the new WFS pnCCD camera of ARGOS, the Ground-Layer Adaptive Optics system (GLAO) for LUCI at LBT. Indeed, with its 264×264 pixels, 48µm pixel size and 1kHz frame rate, this camera provides a technological solution to different needs of the AO systems for ELTs, such as "first-light" low-order SH but as well possibly higher order sensing using pyramid WFS. In this contribution, we present the newly developed WFS pnCCD camera of ARGOS and how it fulfills future detector needs of AO on ELTs.