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The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) was successfully installed into the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in 1997 February, during the second HST servicing mission, STS-82. STIS is a versatile spectrograph, covering the 115-1000 nm wavelength range in a variety of spectroscopic and imaging modes that take advantage of the angular resolution, unobstructed wavelength coverage, and dark sky offered by the HST. In the months since launch, a number of performance tests and calibrations have been carried out and are continuing. These tests demonstrate that the instrument is performing very well. We present here a synopsis of the results to date.

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The capacity of a new type of time-resolved laser-scanning spectroscopy is discussed. Due to the developed modulation technique we obtain a high sensitivity in the absorption measurement as well as a very efficient suppression of the background absorption. The new technique has been used to investigate photophysical and photochemical properties of fluorescent dyes. All presented results are discussed in view of potential applications like dye laser and fluorescence labelling

A Penning trap system has been set up for storing and investigating cluster ions over time ranges from microseconds up to minutes. This enables studies of cluster reactions with extremely low cross sections and the observation of their time dependence in a new regime. The ions are created externally by laser vaporization, cooled by adiabatic expansion of a supersonic beam, and injected into the Penning trap. Detection of reaction products is achieved by combining the advantages of two complementary approaches, viz. the high resolution of Fourier transform mass spectrometry and the high sensitivity of single-ion counting with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The performance of the apparatus is illustrated by results of recent cluster experiments. 0 1995 American Institzde oj-Physics.

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