Final Report Summary - HIPERCAM (HiPERCAM: A high-speed camera for the study of rapid variability in the Universe)
HiPERCAM builds on the success of my previous instrument, ULTRACAM, with very significant improvements in performance thanks to the use of the latest technologies. HiPERCAM uses 4 dichroic beamsplitters to image simultaneously in 5 optical channels covering the ugriz optical bands. Frame rates of over 1000 per second are achievable using an ESO CCD controller (NGC), with every frame GPS timestamped. The detectors are custom-made, frame-transfer CCDs from e2v, with 4 low-noise outputs, mounted in small thermoelectrically-cooled heads operated at 180 K, resulting in virtually no dark current. The two reddest CCDs are deep-depletion devices with anti-etaloning, providing high quantum efficiencies across the red part of the spectrum with no fringing. The instrument also incorporates a novel comparison-star pick-off system for improved differential photometry of the brightest targets, such as the host stars of transiting exoplanets.
HiPERCAM was commissioned on the world's largest optical/infrared telescope - the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) on La Palma - in February 2018. HiPERCAM has already been used for 66 nights on the GTC and two of the first tranche of papers have been published in Nature Astronomy. With its ability to do both high-speed and deep simultaneous ugriz imaging, HiPERCAM is arguably the world’s leading optical camera for astronomy, able to study sources to g~23 mag in 1 s and g~28 mag in 1 hr.