Euclid is a major ESA mission scheduled for launch in 2023-2024 to map the geometry of the dark Universe using two primary probes, weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering. Euclid’s instruments, a visible imager (VIS) and an infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP) have both been designed and built by Euclid Consortium teams. The NISP instrument will hold a large focal plane array of 16 near-infrared H2RG detectors, which are key elements to the performance of the NISP, and therefore to the science return of the mission.

CAGIRE is the near infrared camera of the Colibrí robotic telescope, designed for the follow-up of SVOM alerts, mainly Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), and the quick imaging of sky regions where transient sources are detected by the SVOM satellite. CAGIRE is based on the Astronomical Large Format Array (ALFA) 2k x 2k SWIR sensor from the French consortium CEA-LYNRED. In the context of CAGIRE the sensor is operated in “Up the Ramp” mode to observe the sky in a square field of view of 21.7 arcmin on a side, in the range of wavelengths from 1.1 to 1.8 μm. An observation with CAGIRE consists of a series of short (1-2 minutes) exposures during which the pixels are read out every 1.3 second, continuously accumulating charges proportionally to the received flux, building a ramp.