ULTRACAM — studying astrophysics on the fastest timescales

Abstract The history of observational astronomy has shown that major advances in the science almost always result when a new area of observational parameter space, such as wavelength coverage, angular resolution, sensitivity or sky coverage, becomes accessible for exploration. ULTRACAM is an ultra-fast, triple-beam CCD camera which has been designed to study one of the few remaining unexplored regions of observational parameter space — high temporal resolution. The camera, which has recently been funded in full (£292 k) by PPARC, will see first light during the summer of 2001 and will be used on the 4.2 m WHT, 2.5 m INT, 2.0 m Liverpool Telescope, 3.9 m AAT, 9.1 m SALT and the 1.9 m SAAO Radcliffe Telescope to study astrophysics on the fastest timescales.