“So that’s the end of my talk. But it’s also, unfortunately, the end of the HiPERCAM project.”
The room went quiet.
Vikram Dhillon, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, had just spent half an hour showing what one of the world’s fastest astronomical cameras could do. HiPERCAM has studied white dwarfs, black-hole systems, distant Solar System objects, and even helped check the clock aboard the James Webb Space Telescope.
Then Dhillon told the audience at the UK’s National Astronomy Meeting (NAM2026) that the project’s operations grant had not been renewed.
“We were informed last week that they’ll not be renewing our operations grant,” he said on July 21.
GranTeCan on La Palma, where HiPERCAM is installed. Image credits: Tom De Mulder.
The camera itself is not being dismantled. But Dhillon said the UK-led team behind HiPERCAM and its sister instrument, ULTRACAM, can no longer cover the routine costs that keep them usable: travel, spare parts, data archiving, and day-to-day operations.
“We’ve been completely cut, so we’re going to have to stop operations,” he said. “So that really is the end.”
Built for a universe that flickers
The night sky looks still to us, but it is constantly changing. Stars eclipse each other. Pulsars flash and asteroids zip past by. Distant objects briefly pass in front of background stars. Some of these events last hours, while others are over in less than a second.
×
Thank you! One more thing…
Please check your inbox and confirm your subscription.
That is a problem for ordinary astronomical cameras. They collect light during an exposure, then pause while the image is read out. Anything that happens during that pause can be missed.
HiPERCAM was designed to avoid that. Mounted on the 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) in La Palma, it uses frame-transfer detectors that move images into storage almost instantly, allowing the next exposure to begin while the previous one is read out. The instrument also splits incoming light into five colours and records them at the same time. Its official project page describes it as capable of high-speed imaging at more than 1,000 frames per second.
“We can approach 1,000 frames a second, one millisecond exposure times, with a fraction of a millisecond gap between them,” Dhillon said at NAM2026, where ZME Science was covering the event.
What HiPERCAM has done
HiPERCAM. Image credits: GCT.
There’s no shortage of applications. For starters, astronomers used it to measure eclipsing white dwarfs—the dense remnants left after stars like the Sun die. By timing those eclipses precisely, researchers can measure the stars’ sizes and masses and test models of stellar evolution. HiPERCAM has also helped investigate material near stellar-mass black hole, where gas moves and flickers under extreme gravity. It’s even been used to improve the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
HiPERCAM’s GPS-synchronized timestamps helped provide an external timing reference for the JWST. A 2024 study measured JWST’s clock accuracy at 0.12 ± 0.06 seconds, about five times better than its pre-launch requirement.
Closer to home, the camera recorded stellar occultations, in which a Solar System object crosses in front of a distant star. One such observation helped reveal a ring around the dwarf planet Quaoar at a distance where conventional theory suggested that ring material should gather into a moon.
Artist’s impression of Quaoar with its outer ring and its moon Weywot. Image via Wiki Commons.
Dhillon said HiPERCAM has become one of the most productive instruments at the GTC by observing hour. Its role may become even more important as astronomy enters the age of giant sky surveys. Facilities such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will repeatedly scan huge areas of sky and flag things that change. But those alerts still need fast follow-up instruments that can zoom in and capture the details.
HiPERCAM was built for exactly that.
The £50,000 problem
Astronomy projects often run into budget trouble. Usually, the issue is a costly upgrade or an instrument that needs replacing. Here, Dhillon said, the problem is routine operations.
He put the annual shortfall at about £50,000, or roughly $67,000. That is a small fraction of the more than £5 million he said had gone into HiPERCAM, not counting the value of the telescope it operates on.
“We can’t operate, we can’t even travel or buy spares or buy archiving media for the data we produce,” Dhillon said.
The rejected funding also supports ULTRACAM, an earlier three-colour high-speed camera. ULTRACAM began operating in 2002 and is now installed on the European Southern Observatory’s 3.5-meter New Technology Telescope in Chile. HiPERCAM’s own project page describes ULTRACAM as its direct predecessor.
The decision comes amid wider pressure on the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the UK agency that supports astronomy, particle physics, nuclear physics, and major research facilities.
The Royal Astronomical Society had listed HiPERCAM and ULTRACAM among projects at risk during the STFC funding review. UKRI later said discovery-led research in particle physics, astronomy, and nuclear physics would be protected “within the context of STFC’s portfolio,” but also confirmed that the overall PPAN science budget will fall by 2.7% over four years.
What happens now
The future of HiPERCAM is unclear. Dhillon said the team had only learned of the decision the previous week.
“Things are a bit raw to be honest,” he said during the question period. ZME Science has contacted Dhillon for comment.
“We’ve been told very clearly that there’s no going back on the decision,” he said.
HiPERCAM is permanently mounted on the GTC, where Dhillon described it as the telescope’s main optical imager and its second-most-requested instrument. The observatory may therefore have an interest in keeping it operational.
One option would be for another organization to cover the operating costs. Another would be to transfer ownership of HiPERCAM to the GTC. Dhillon raised that possibility during the discussion but did not present it as an agreed plan.
“We want to do science with our camera. We’re not just done it to build it and give it away like we’re some kind of company or anything. We’re doing it for the research that we want to get ourselves,” Dhillon added.
Such an arrangement could preserve the hardware. But it would end the current model, where the team that built HiPERCAM also maintains it, improves it, and receives guaranteed observing time in return.
For now, there is no publicly announced date for operations to stop. There is also no confirmed plan for the GTC or another funder to keep the instrument available after the UK-led operations grant ends.
A camera built to catch the universe in milliseconds may now be waiting on a much slower process: someone finding the money to keep it alive.