ULTRASPEC is a high-speed, spectroscopic camera based on low-light-level CCDs (L3CCDs) and the data acquisition system of ULTRACAM. The project is a collaboration between the Universities of Sheffield, Warwick and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, with funding provided by the European Commission under the auspices of OPTICON Joint Research Activity 3: Fast readout, high-performance optical detectors. ULTRASPEC was tested for the first time on-sky in December 2006 on the EFOSC2 spectrograph mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the ESO 3.6-m telescope at La Silla. The first 17-night science run with ULTRASPEC took place in January 2008 on the ESO 3.6-m, and a second 21-night science run on the NTT was successfully completed in June 2009.

Key personnel: Vik Dhillon (Sheffield), Tom Marsh (Warwick), Naidu Bezawada, Derek Ives, Andy Vick (UKATC), Kieran O'Brien (ESO), Chris Copperwheat (Warwick), Richard Hickman (Warwick), Paul Kerry, Chris Savoury (Sheffield)

1. Annual report for 2004 presented at JRA3 meeting in Heidelberg
2. Datasheet on the E2V CCD201-20 used in ULTRASPEC
3. Annual report for 2005 presented at JRA3 meeting in Galway
4. Photos of the new high-voltage clock board and E2V CCD201 in the ESO cryostat
5. 16-June-2006: First light in the lab with the ESO cryostat!
6. Functional and performance requirements for ULTRASPEC
7. Technical note on L3CCD simulations
8. Talk on high-speed spectroscopy at the Galway workshop on High Time Resolution Astrophysics 6-7 June 2006
9. Paper on high-speed spectroscopy for the proceedings of the Galway workshop on High Time Resolution Astrophysics 6-7 June 2006
10. Photos of EFOSC2 and the ESO 3.6m taken during July 2006
11. Commissioning plan
12. Simon Tulloch's L3CCD web pages
13. Commissioning report for ESO
14. Photos from ULTRASPEC commissioning run in Dec 2006
15. Article for ESO Messenger
16. ULTRASPEC paper presented at the HTRA conference The Universe at sub-second timescales, ROE, 11-13 September 2007
17. Specifications for EFOSC2 VPH grisms procured for the ULTRASPEC run in January 2008
18. Proposals, schedule and observing information for ULTRASPEC run in period 80
19. ULTRASPEC handling and cooling procedures
20. Wiring diagrams: cryostat biases, cryostat clocks, external biases, external clocks, external temperature, SDSU front panel
21. My report on VPH grisms for EFOSC2
22. ESO's report on VPH grisms for EFOSC2
23. Derek Ives' thesis on ULTRASPEC
24. Simon Tulloch's thesis on QUCAM
25. ULTRASPEC wavelength range, resolution and pixel scale
26. ULTRASPEC frame rate calculator
27. ULTRASPEC imaging ETC
28. ULTRASPEC spectroscopy ETC (unfinished)
29. ULTRASPEC user manual
30. Richard Hickman's PhD thesis (Warwick)
31. ULTRASPEC detector page