Euroball: Present status and outlook

Euroball is a European project to build a highly efficient and powerful gamma-ray spectrometer for nuclear structure spectroscopy. The project is an amalgamation of recent technical advances in detectors, electronics and data acquisition. In the first phase the spectrometer consists of 30 large single crystal Ge detectors, 26 Clover Ge detectors and 15 Cluster Ge detectors each with an associated suppression shield. The 239 individual Ge detector elements will have a total photopeak efficiency ∈ _p of ≈ 10% and will enable the properties of the atomic nucleus to be studied with a sensitivity up to or better than 10^?5 of the production cross-section. The elements of the spectrometer, including the detectors, the electronics and the data acquisition system, some of the planned ancillary detectors and the first results will be presented. Several developments are under investigation for the upgrade of Euroball for its second phase. These include an inner BGO ball for multiplicity and summed energy determination and inner particle detectors for charged particle identification. These developments will also be discussed.