ultracam milestones

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	March & April 2002	integration, alignment and testing
	May 2002	first light on the 4.2m WHT (commissioning + first scientific run)
	August/September 2002	second scientific run on the WHT + first external users
	Spring 2003	commissioning on the 2.3m Aristarchos Telescope
	Early 2004	commissioning spectrographic mode/L3CCDs
	Late 2004	commissioning on VLT
	2005	use on SALT?

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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)

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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!