Improvements to the Photometric response and positional accuracy of the Yale PDS 2020G microdensitometer

The necessity to incorporate several hardware changes to optimize the Yale PDS 2020G microdensitometer for photometric and astrometric research are discussed. The properties of a new high speed photometer and a positional calibration system are described. The new photometer incorporates a high speed logarithmic analog to digital converter with more than 10 times the resolution of the former system and a cycle time of approximately 50 usec. The positional calibration system monitors the drunkenness of the stages with respect to fixed index lines and enables the correction of the +/- 5 micro stage errors to an accuracy of better than 1 micro.