A very compact, vacuum compatible charge coupled device (CCD) camera has been developed for vacuum ultraviolet and soft x-ray imaging spectroscopy. It can house any CCD frame format and two of them have been selected:385×576pixels, suitable for normal incidence spectroscopy (300–2500 Å), and256×1024pixels, for grazing incidence applications (5–300 Å). Owing to its small and lightweight package, it can be placed at the focus of vacuum spectrometers. A new concept cooling system is based on a three stage thermoelectric cooler in thermal connection with the CCD through a 30-cm-long flexible conductor, allowing the detector to have stress-free movements along the focal plane and a constant temperature. The camera head has been designed to achieve a high cooling efficiency, thus the CCD can be operated at−40 °C.This detector is well suited for applications that require high sensitivity and signal to noise ratio, wide dynamic range, good spatial and spectral resolutions. In addition, it overcomes the limits of fixed detectors and lets the optical performances of the spectrometer remain unchanged. The CCD camera has been tested during an experiment of laser produced plasma spectroscopy and some preliminary results are reported. ©1998 American Institute of Physics.