HiPERCAM and ULTRACAM operations

HiPERCAM and ULTRACAM are high-speed optical cameras designed to study the Universe on the fastest timescales.

The next few years will be witness to a revolution in our knowledge of the Universe with the advent of large survey facilities such as Rubin, SKA, PLATO, Euclid and GOTO. Many new variable and transient sources will be discovered by these facilities. Time-domain astrophysics is set to become a core activity, and detailed follow-up studies of the most interesting objects will be essential. HiPERCAM and ULTRACAM have been designed to fulfill this role. A wide range of object classes are routinely observed by these two instruments, including: black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, exoplanets and exo-asteroids, Solar System bodies, active galactic nuclei, fast radio bursts, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, fast X-ray transients.

HiPERCAM is the newer of the two instruments and covers the northern sky. It was funded by a 3.5Meuro ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Dhillon in 2014, and was built by a consortium from the Universities of Sheffield, Warwick, Durham, the UKATC and IAC. HiPERCAM is permanently mounted on the 10.4m GTC on La Palma, the world's largest optical/IR telescope, and saw first light in 2018. HiPERCAM is arguably the most powerful ground-based optical imager in the world. This is because of three unique characteristics: 1. HiPERCAM images in 5 wavebands simultaneously on its 5 CCD detectors, covering the entire optical spectrum from 300-1000 nm. It is therefore up to 5 times more efficient than other cameras. 2. HiPERCAM uses custom-built (for 1.0Meuro) low-noise, frame-transfer e2v CCDs that are cooled thermo-electrically to below 183 K, thereby allowing both long-exposure, deep imaging of faint targets, as well as high-speed (over 1000 frames per second) imaging of rapidly varying targets. It is therefore much more versatile than other cameras. 3. HiPERCAM is mounted on the world's largest optical telescope, located at one of...