ULTRACAM SERVICE OPPORTUNITY ON THE WHT ING announces the availability of ULTRACAM for service observations on the WHT on the night of May 5, 2004. The observations will be performed on a shared-risks basis in collaboration with Vik Dhillon (Sheffield) and Tom Marsh (Warwick). ULTRACAM is a CCD camera designed to provide imaging photometry at high temporal resolution in three different colours simultaneously. ULTRACAM mounts at the Cassegrain focus of the WHT and provides a 5 arcminute field on its three 1024x1024 CCDs (i.e. 0.3 arcseconds/pixel). Incident light is first collimated and then split into three different beams using a pair of dichroic beamsplitters. One beam is dedicated to the SDSS u' filter, another to the SDSS g' filter and the third to the SDSS r'/i'/z' filters, although it is possible to use clear filters to increase throughput. Because ULTRACAM employs frame-transfer chips, the dead-time between exposures is negligible (typically 24 milliseconds) and, using two small windows, it is possible to read the chips out at up to 360 frames per second. Each image taken by ULTRACAM is time-stamped using a dedicated GPS system to an accuracy of better than 50 microseconds and a pipeline data reduction system is provided to enable real-time assessment and full reduction of the light curves. For further information, please contact Vik Dhillon (vik.dhillon@shef.ac.uk) or Tom Marsh (trm@astro.soton.ac.uk), or consult the ULTRACAM web pages (www.shef.ac.uk/~phys/people/vdhillon/ultracam), where you will also find on-line user manuals and signal-to-noise/frame rate calculators. All service proposals should be submitted using the standard ING service form which can found at http://www.ing.iac.es/Astronomy/observing/service/apply.html and selecting the Ultracam link. Proposals will be refereed on a rolling basis and will be accepted up to and including April 25, 2004. ============================================================= To subscribe to [INGNEWS] send to majordomo@ing.iac.es the command "subscribe ingnews" from the email address you want to subscribe. Leave the subject field and the rest of the message body empty. To unsubscribe from [INGNEWS] send to majordomo@ing.iac.es the command "unsubscribe ingnews" from the email address you want to unsubscribe. Leave the subject field and the rest of the message body empty. You can subscribe a colleague to [INGNEWS] by sending an email to majordomo@ing.iac.es with the message "subscribe ingnews address" in the body of the message, where address should contain your collegue's email address. This only works from a previously subscribed address. For further information on ING, point your browser to: http://www.ing.iac.es/