Hitch-hiker Camera

First light: November 1990

Last commissioning:

Designed and built by: University of Wales College of Cardiff, the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge and the University of Durham, developed with the support of an SERC grant and the aid of the RGO.

Description: The instrument is a dual CCD camera mounted inside the Cassegrain A&G Unit which is designed to work off-axis, in parallel with on-axis WHT Cassegrain instruments such as ISIS and TAURUS. In each exposure it images a 6×4 arc minute field in two colours. The field is offset by 6.8 arcminutes from the optical axis, which leaves on-axis observations unvignetted. 

Some scientific highlights:

• Dwarf galaxy population (1994)