High-speed astrophysics with ULTRACAM

ULTRACAM is a digital camera capable of taking (and storing) up to 500 red, green and blue images per second. The instrument was built in just under 3 years by a consortium from the Universities of Sheffield, Warwick and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, using a £300,000 grant awarded by PPARC. ULTRACAM saw 'first light' on 16 May 2002 on the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) on La Palma, and first light on the 8.2-m Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile on 4 May 2005. This latter telescope is currently the world's largest and ULTRACAM became both the first instrument to make use of its new 'Visitor Focus' and the first UK-built instrument to be mounted (at any focus) on the VLT. To date, ULTRACAM has been awarded a total of 87 nights on the WHT and 23 nights on the VLT for projects in many different areas of astrophysics, including the study of white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, red dwarfs, pulsars, black-hole/neutron-star X-ray binaries, gamma-ray bursts, cataclysmic variables, eclipsing binary stars, extrasolar planets, active galactic nuclei and occultations by Solar System objects (Titan, Pluto and Kuiper Belt objects). Since ULTRACAM is a private instrument, the ULTRACAM team at Sheffield are responsible for the installation and removal of the instrument as well as for the observations with it. This means that the ULTRACAM team have had to spend approximately 200 nights at the WHT and VLT over the past 4 years. Dhillon (the ULTRACAM PI) has been finding it increasingly difficult to meet this demand for time on ULTRACAM and balance it against the time required to fully exploit the unique scientific datasets which have been/will be obtained and the continued maintenance and enhancements required to keep the instrument at the forefront of its field. This grant therefore requests funding to enable Dhillon to devote all of his time to the ULTRACAM project for the next 3 years. The grant also requests continued funding for Littlefair, the ULTRACAM PDRA at Sheffield, who is now a fully-trained, invaluable member of the team who is leading two major ULTRACAM research projects.