How a CCD (Charged Couple Device) Works

A CCD works in this way:
- Light, or photons, travels through a lens and strikes the CCD.
- The photons strike an atom, freeing electrons which accumulate in capacitors.
- The circuit at the bottom of the array measures the voltage of each element in the last row of the capacitors and clears the information.
- The remaining rows pass information, or electrons, to the row below which is in turn read. This is repeated until all rows are read.