Seminars : Documents

New instrumentation and facilities at Paranal
Alain Smette (ESO)

Following the commissioning of KMOS, MUSE, SPHERE, and of the re-furbished VLTI laboratory, ESO will complete the implementation of its VLT/VLTI 2nd generation instruments in the near future with the commissioning of GRAVITY, ESPRESSO and MATISSE. In parallel, the installation of the Deformable Secondary Mirror on Yepun (UT4) - taking place as I speak - is the most critical element of the deployment of the Adaptive Optics Facility, which has already seen the installation of the 4-Lasers Guide Star Facility and the GRAAL, the adaptive optics module for HAWK-I; it will be completed by the installation of GALACSI, the adaptive optics module for MUSE. These modules will allow Ground Layer Adaptive Optics assisted observations for HAWK-I, and MUSE in Wide Field mode as well as Laser Topographic Adaptive Optics for MUSE in Narrow Field mode. A short description of these instruments and their scientific capabilities will be given.