# First light with HiPERCAM on the GTC

## TL;DR

HiPERCAM is a five-beam imager that achieved first light on the GTC, enabling simultaneous multi-band imaging with high speed and sensitivity, demonstrating its design and initial performance.

## Contribution

This paper presents the design, first-light performance, and future plans for HiPERCAM, a novel multi-beam imager for the GTC.

## Key findings

- Successful first light on the GTC in February 2018.
- High-speed imaging over 1000 frames per second achieved.
- Effective simultaneous ugriz imaging across five CCDs.

## Abstract

HiPERCAM is a quintuple-beam imager that saw first light on the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in October 2017 and on the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) in February 2018. The instrument uses re-imaging optics and 4 dichroic beamsplitters to record ugriz (300-1000nm) images simultaneously on its five CCD cameras. The detectors in HiPERCAM are frame-transfer devices cooled thermo-electrically to -90degC, thereby allowing both long-exposure, deep imaging of faint targets, as well as high-speed (over 1000 windowed frames per second) imaging of rapidly varying targets. In this paper, we report on the as-built design of HiPERCAM, its first-light performance on the GTC, and some of the planned future enhancements.