Dr. V. Dhillon

Dept. Physics and Astronomy

University of Sheffield

Sheffield

S3 7RH

U.K

Our Ref : F3.37

Your Ref:

21 August 2000

Dear Dr. Dhillon,

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (hereinafter referred to as "the Council") hereby offers the University of Sheffield, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy (hereinafter referred to as "the Customer") a contract for the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (hereinafter referred to as "the UKATC") to undertake work for the ULTRACAM project which will consist of the design and build of the three CCD cameras, a data acquisition system and also the optical design, subject to the following terms and conditions.

BACKGROUND

ULTRACAM is a triple beam high speed optical imager and photometer, designed for use as a dedicated travelling instrument and which will be used on many of the major telescopes around the world. The Customer was awarded a PPARC grant in 1999 to build this instrument. They have subsequently sub-contracted part of the instrument design and build to the UKATC in Edinburgh.

SCOPE OF THE WORK

Details of the requirements specification for the UKATC contribution to ULTRACAM are attached to this offer as Annex 1. However the following is a brief summary of the expected contribution from the UKATC to the project :-

• 3 X CCD Cameras, cooled to give required dark current rates and designed to ensure adequate noise performance. The cameras will mount directly to the main ULTRACAM instrument, probably via X-Y translation stages as specified by Customer.

• A 6 channel SDSU CCD controller with relevant low level code to operate and readout the 3 CCDs as per requirements set out in the relevant tables in Annex 1.

• A Data Acquisition System which can receive image data from the SDSU controller, then absolute time tag these images and store them in the required format. Again the detailed requirements for this system are set out below in Annex 1. This system should also include a user command line interface as detailed below.

• The UKATC will do an optical design of the ULTRACAM instrument with enough details supplied to allow the Customer to then place a contract with an optical manufacturer for the components. See Annex 6 for more details.

EXCLUSIONS

The UKATC's contractual obligations do not include the supply of any of the following: -

• Data Reduction Computer

• Back up tapes

• Large amounts of on-line disk storage - only enough will be supplied to meet the data rate requirements.

• Pipeline Data Reduction software

• Commissioning or any travel costs

DURATION OF THE CONTRACT

The UKATC will commence on the date this contract has been signed and agreed. The UKATC will agree to deliver their contractual obligations to the ULTRACAM project by October 2002, at the very latest. However they will proceed solely on a best efforts basis to complete the work by September 2001.

A more detailed GANTT chart showing project milestones and delivery schedule can be seen in Annex 5 of this document.

CHARGES

The Council's charges for doing the work as described in this contract will be £229,000 (two hundred and twenty nine thousand pounds). This can be broken down to the following costs :-

Capital Equipment Costs = £ 131k

UKATC staff costs = £ 87.5k (1.6 dsy)

Optical Design Costs = £10.5k

The Council agrees that it will only charge for the work done up to a maximum value of £229,000.

PAYMENT SCHEDULE

Assuming that the project is started at the UKATC in August 2000 and finishes in September 2001 as per the GANTT chart detailed in Annex 5, then we can link the payments from the customer to the UKATC to major milestones on the GANTT chart. The payments should therefore be made on the following dates :-

Contract approved - August 2000 - 25% of total payment made

Preliminary Design Review - January 2001 - further 25% of total payment made

Critical Design Review - April 2001 - further 25 % of total payment made

Final Acceptance Review - September 2001 - final 25 % of total payment made.

LAW (ENGLISH)

This contract shall be considered as a contract made in England and subject to English law. All disputes arising out of the contract shall be resolved in accordance with the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1950 or any statutory modification or re-enactment thereof.

PAYMENT OF ACCOUNTS

An invoice shall be issued on completion of the milestones specified in the payment schedule. Payment shall be made by the customer within 30 days of the date of such an invoice. Payment should be made by BACS transfer to our account at :-

Bank of Scotland,

426 Morningside Road,

Edinburgh,

EH10 5QF

Sort Code 80-02-77

Account No. 00136018

DISCLAIMER

No liability whatsoever shall be accepted by the Council in respect of the use which the Customer shall make of the information supplied under this contract.

The Council accepts no liability for any injury ( including death ) to any person or for any loss of or damage to property of whatever kind occasioned by or arising out of any work carried out in pursuance of this contract save to the extent that such injury, loss or damage is caused by the proven negligence of the Council, its servants or agents.

CONFIDENTIALITY

The Customer undertakes to keep confidential and not to divulge without the Council's express permission, to any third party, nor to make any use whatsoever (except as may be necessary for the purpose of this contract) of any confidential information that may come into its possession as a result of this contract.

Similarly, the Council undertakes to keep confidential and not to divulge any information or designs supplied by the Customer to the Council for the purposes of this contract.

TERMINATION

PPARC reserves the right to terminate the Contract at any time subject to the giving of not less than one month’s notice in writing and the reimbursement of any costs in respect of commitments properly and necessarily incurred before the date that notice of termination is received and any unavoidable commitments arising as a direct consequence of such notice.

GENERAL CONDITIONS OF CONTRACT

Except as provided above, the contract shall be subject to the Council's General Conditions of Contract attached at Annex 6.

FURTHER INFORMATION may be obtained from:

UKATC

Royal Observatory

Blackford Hill

EDINBURGH

EH9 3HJ

Telephone: 0131 668 8100

Fax No: 0131 668 8264

Technical enquiries - D.J. Ives Ext: 432

Contracts enquiries - A. Skelton Ext: 294

ACCEPTANCE OF QUOTATION

Signed for and on behalf of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council

............................................ Date ........................... (signed on 21 August 2000)

APG Russell

Director

Signed for and on behalf of the customer

............................................ Date ........................... (signed on 23 August 2000)

Name: Roger Olivant

Position: Department Manager

ANNEX 1 - Detailed Requirements Specification for the UKATC's contribution to the ULTRACAM project

CCD Camera Heads Operational Requirements specification

The following table outlines the requirements for the camera heads which will hold the CCDs in their required position relative to the main instrument assembly. The heads should allow the CCDs to be adequately cooled to meet the required dark current rates. They should also ensure that no condensation forms on the active silicon of each of the three detectors. Likewise they should allow the CCDs to be mounted to the instrument in the correct position and orientation. However there will be no facilities on these mechanical heads themselves for accurate X-Y pixel alignment. This facility must be part of the main instrument body itself as supplied by the customer. This will probably take the form of X-Y stages to which the CCD heads mount.

CCD Cameras' Controller Operational Requirements Specification

The following table assumes that a 12 slot CCD controller as supplied by SDSU will be used. This controller will consist of 6 video inputs to allow each of the 2 outputs from the 3 CCDs to be readout in parallel. The present system design assumes the controller will feed the image data to a SDSU supplied PCI interface card and thence to a PC. The controller will also receive commands via another fibre link from the same PCI interface.

Camera Head and Controller Services Requirements Specification.

Assuming that the CCDs are Peltier cooled then low noise dc current supplies and controlling electronics will be required for normal operation. Other electronics will also be required for normal operation and these will include a PSU for the SDSU controller, PSUs for each of the Peltier coolers and a water cooler to heat exchange with the Peltiers. Interlock electronics are also required to ensure that the Peltiers can only be switched on after the heat exchanger has been switched on. These service electronics will need to be mounted off the main instrument but within a few metres of the camera heads and SDSU controller. They will probably mount in a standard "U" sized chassis which itself then mounts to the cassegrain rack mounted on the telescope. The water cooler may have to be floor standing with pipes attached and made long enough to ensure operation at all telescope positions. These electronic services will meet the following specifications.

Data Acquisition Hardware Requirements Specification

The following requirements specification assumes that our data acquisition system (DAS) consists of a high end PC with a PCI interface connected via a 50 MHz two way fibre link to the SDSU controller. The PC will be running Real-time LINUX, have local disk storage and an ethernet connection to the outside world. The DAS should be designed such that it allows a previous set of images to be pipeline processed whilst the cameras are integrating and reading out the present data. However this pipeline processing should not slow down or stop the data taking process. Please see Annex 2 for a detailed block diagram of the camera system.

Readout Modes

All three CCDs will always be readout in parallel. There will not be the option of running CCDs on an individual basis however only one CCD need be connected to the controller. Both outputs will always be used on each CCD. Each CCD can therefore be thought of as two halves each of 512 x 1024 pixels in their respective imaging half. There are three possible readout modes envisaged which are detailed in Annex 4.

User Interface Requirements Specification

The user interface shall consist of a simple command line interface which should allow the following set of commands to be implemented.

Annex 3 - Image Data Storage File Format and Header Information

The format that the image data is saved to disk will be dictated by the main requirements of ULTRACAM which are high sustained data collection, storage and handling and absolute time stamping. There are data handling mechanisms better suited to these requirements than FITS file format, such as HDS, HDF and SDS. All of these have at least one way of converting to FITS and some of them also have transparent access, that is, methods that make them look like a FITS file as far as a data reduction program is concerned.

The ULTRACAM camera system will not interface to any other telescope control system. Therefore the user will have to enter information normally collected from telescope systems by editing a file.

The image data will be stored with the minimum of the following header information :-

i. Telescope Name - this will now be obtained from the "setup" command.

ii. Object name - this will be prompted for by the "header" command.

iii. RA - this will be read from a catalogue of objects supplied by us and in a format specified by us or you (whichever you prefer).

iv. DEC - as for iii.

v. Equinox - as for iii.

vi. UTC - this will be obtained from the GPS receiver (assuming the GPS also gives the date)

vii. Exposure time - this can be obtained from the parameters entered for the "run" command.

viii. Number of exposures - as for vii.

ix. Readout speed - this can be obtained using the parameters read in using the "recall" command.

x. Binning factors - as for ix.

xi. Window co-ordinates - as for ix.

xii. Name of data file - no longer required.

The data files will form a numerical sequence (e.g. "run001204") which automatically increments on every readout.

When you type the "headers" command, you are only prompted for the object name. Note that if the specified object name is not present in the catalogue, the command should refuse to run and you would then have to edit the new parameters into the data file and run "headers" again.

Annex 5 - Project Schedule

Annex 6 - The UKATC has been also contracted by Customer to do the detailed optical design for the ULTRACAM project, the details of which are specified here.

The total staff effort required to deliver the optical design, and give purchase support and optical alignment support is estimated to be 30 days, to which will be added 5 days for contingency. This figure of 35 days is hence the maximum the customer will be charged for the work described.

UCAM-0034 Design Study - Up to three different optical designs, including recommendations for coatings, will be fully costed prior to the Preliminary Design Review. These are as follows :-

• A design for a 5 arcminute field of view at the WHT Cassegrain.

• If the above is not affordable, a design for as large a field of view as possible at WHT Cassegrain.

• If it proves impossible to afford a field of view larger than approximately 2.5 arcminutes at WHT Cassegrain, a design which delivers a 2.5 arcminute field at WHT Nasmyth and a 5 arcminute field on Aristarchus.

The above design study planned has been agreed after detailed discussions between the customer and the UKATC.

UCAM-0035 Pixel Scale - The pixel scale in all of the above designs will be approximately 0.3 arcseconds per pixel. The image quality will be such that the stellar profile is dominated by the effects of seeing during median (0.7 arcsecond) conditions on La Palma. No throughput requirements are specified, although it is understood that the maximum throughput which can be afforded and which maintains the required field of view will be striven for.

UCAM-0036 Ordering - The UKATC will provide sufficient information to allow the customer to place a contract with an optical manufacturer for the components.

UCAM-0037 Mounting - The CaF2 elements will be mounted by the manufacturer, using a mounting barrel designed and manufactured by the customer, based on advice provided by the UKATC.

UCAM-0038 Acceptance - The UKATC will perform acceptance tests of the optics using the interferograms supplied by the manufacturer.

UCAM-0039 Alignment and Testing - The UKATC will provide advice and, if necessary, staff effort during the final alignment and testing phase of the entire optical system at Sheffield or the UKATC. This effort will form part of the original allocation of 35 days.