ultracam milestones

---

	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!