Abstract:-
I will present the rapid scientific and technological expansion taking place at the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, the leading institution for astronomy in South-East Asia. The NARIT science group includes scientists with a broad range of interests spanning from solar system objects, to exoplanets, to stellar physics and cosmology. Alongside with a several 50 to 70-cm class telescopes, some of which are fully robotic, the flagship facility is the new Thai National 2.4-m Telescope (TNT), equipped with spectrographs and imaging cameras. TNT is open for observations mostly in the dry season (approx. October to May). I will discuss the characteristics of the site and the opportunities for telescope access and collaboration.
I will then discuss in particular ULTRASPEC, a visitor instrument built by a Consortium of UK institutes, based on a low-noise, frame-transfer EMCCD with high-quality optics and high-time resolution capabilities extending to few milliseconds: a niche for which no other observatory is similarly equipped in the longitude range of TNT. By using a highly flexible scheme of subarray reading, sampling rates as fast as 400Hz can be achieved. I provide examples of new exciting results in areas such as eclipsing binaries, cataclysmic variables, flickering, exoplanet transits, and occultations by the Moon and other solar system bodies.