Instrumentation at the ESO VLT

Details Instrumentation at the ESO VLT Instrumentation at the ESO VLT

Aug 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008spie.7014e...2m&link_type=abstract

Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II. Edited by McLean, Ian S.; Casali, Mark M. Proceedings of the SPI

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Paranal mountain in northern Chile comprises four 8.2m diameter 'Unit Telescopes' (also used for interferometry); four 1.8m movable outrigger telescopes dedicated to interferometry and two survey telescopes - the 2.6m VST to be used in the visible and the 4m class, infrared VISTA telescope. Here I will give an overview of the accompanying large instrument development programme which has so far delivered 11 operational facility instruments for the UT's (leaving one visitor Nasmyth focus) and 2 major instruments for the interferometric focus. In addition, a laser guide star facility has been added on UT4 to generate artificial (sodium) stars for the adaptive optics assisted instruments NACO and SINFONI; the optical and infrared cameras for the survey telescopes are almost ready; four major second generation instruments for the UTs (X-Shooter, KMOS, MUSE and SPHERE) are at various stages of development throughout Europe; a fifth (high resolution spectrograph capable of 10cm/s radial velocity stability at the incoherent combined focus of the four 8m telescopes) is the subject of a Call for Proposals; UT4 is being converted to a fully adaptive telescope and three second generation interferometric instruments (MATISSE, GRAVITY and VSI) have been approved following successful completion of their Phase A studies.

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