Abstract
Traditional optical astronomy is limited to the measurement of transient signals at time scales greater than ∼ 1ms due to the readout speed of detectors and read noise limitations to sensitivity in short exposures. The Ultra-Fast Astronomy Project (UFA)1, 2 explores much faster events in the sub-millisecond domain. We designed a single-photon imaging camera based on position-sensitive silicon photomultiplier (PS-SiPM) with a low-cost FPGA readout system to observe such events. The sensor operates in a photon-counting mode with time resolution on the order of 10ns and a spatial resolution of around 200μm. We present our camera’s electronic and mechanical design, the algorithm for data handling, and testing and calibration data.