ultracam milestones back to top




May 2001 critical design review at the UKATC
Feb 2002 first light on the WHT
Spring 2002 simultaneous WHT observations of polars with XMM
August 2002 pluto occultation observations at the AAT
Autumn 2002 commissioning on Aristarchos
2005 commissioning on SALT



for additional information on ULTRACAM, please refer to
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phys/people/vdhillon/ultracam
or contact Vik Dhillon (vik.dhillon@sheffield.ac.uk) or Tom Marsh (trm@astro.soton.ac.uk)












anticipated questions!

q1: why not just use STJs?
  • ultracam performance currently comparable
  • small field of view
  • lack of portability
  • bright-star limit
  • cost/availability
      .....but it is undoubtedly the detector of the future

q2: why not use L3CCDs? (Mackay et al, 2001, astro-ph/0101409)
  • L3CCDs use substantial internal gain to achieve sub-electron readout noise at MHz pixel rates
  • currently only small format and unthinned
  • can be used both as a normal CCD or as a photon-counting detector
      .....so we would have used them, had they been available!