UK ELT Programme PPRP 2022
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Oxford Physics
Abstract
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is now under construction in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). With a diameter of 39m and a greater collecting area than all current large telescopes combined, the sensitivity and spatial resolution of the ELT will dwarf those of existing facilities in the visible and infrared. With the first observations planned for 2027, the sheer sensitivity of the ELT is truly remarkable, with a collecting area over 18 times that of ESO's current largest telescopes. The telescope will also continuously correct the light from astronomical objects with a technique called adaptive optics, giving astronomers images with five times better resolution than possible today.
This vast step forward in both collecting area and image resolution from the ELT will be transformative for nearly every aspect of contemporary astronomy, from searches for molecules potentially linked to life in nearby exoplanets, out to detection of the most distant galaxies at the edge of the observable Universe. It will give us our first detailed views of individual stars in galaxies which are millions of light-years beyond the Milky Way and help to settle arguments as to whether some of the fundamental constants of physics vary in space and time. It will have the capabilities to directly detect mature planets similar to those in our Solar System around nearby stars, while also probing the distribution of elusive dark matter in galaxies when the Universe was just 10% of its current age. This is just a small subset of the diverse and profound scientific breakthroughs we expect from the ELT, and UK astronomers and engineers are playing leading roles in the development of the cameras and spectrographs that will take the valuable observations in the late 2020s and beyond.
Building on more than 15 years of scientific and technical development, the UK ELT Programme coordinates the UK roles in ELT instrumentation. At the core of the programme is leadership of the design and construction of the HARMONI instrument, one of the two first-light instruments for the telescope, ensuring UK astronomers will be well prepared to reap the rewards from ELT observations as soon as possible and some of its first discoveries.
The programme also includes smaller roles in future instruments, so that UK astronomers can exploit as much as possible of the tremendous new discovery space of the ELT. The UK is building the high-resolution spectrograph for METIS, the third instrument for the ELT, now in construction (led by the Netherlands). UK groups also have key roles in soon-to-commence construction of the next instruments, ANDES (formerly HIRES, led by Italy) and MOSAIC (led by France), both of which will be essential to exploit the huge scientific opportunities of the observatory. Lastly, the programme is investing in research and development of new technologies that will influence the design of future ELT instruments, particularly the development of the PCS instrument for studies of exoplanets.
This vast step forward in both collecting area and image resolution from the ELT will be transformative for nearly every aspect of contemporary astronomy, from searches for molecules potentially linked to life in nearby exoplanets, out to detection of the most distant galaxies at the edge of the observable Universe. It will give us our first detailed views of individual stars in galaxies which are millions of light-years beyond the Milky Way and help to settle arguments as to whether some of the fundamental constants of physics vary in space and time. It will have the capabilities to directly detect mature planets similar to those in our Solar System around nearby stars, while also probing the distribution of elusive dark matter in galaxies when the Universe was just 10% of its current age. This is just a small subset of the diverse and profound scientific breakthroughs we expect from the ELT, and UK astronomers and engineers are playing leading roles in the development of the cameras and spectrographs that will take the valuable observations in the late 2020s and beyond.
Building on more than 15 years of scientific and technical development, the UK ELT Programme coordinates the UK roles in ELT instrumentation. At the core of the programme is leadership of the design and construction of the HARMONI instrument, one of the two first-light instruments for the telescope, ensuring UK astronomers will be well prepared to reap the rewards from ELT observations as soon as possible and some of its first discoveries.
The programme also includes smaller roles in future instruments, so that UK astronomers can exploit as much as possible of the tremendous new discovery space of the ELT. The UK is building the high-resolution spectrograph for METIS, the third instrument for the ELT, now in construction (led by the Netherlands). UK groups also have key roles in soon-to-commence construction of the next instruments, ANDES (formerly HIRES, led by Italy) and MOSAIC (led by France), both of which will be essential to exploit the huge scientific opportunities of the observatory. Lastly, the programme is investing in research and development of new technologies that will influence the design of future ELT instruments, particularly the development of the PCS instrument for studies of exoplanets.
Organisations
Publications
Barroso J
(2024)
Euclid: The Early Release Observations Lens Search Experiment
Bendo G
(2023)
The bright extragalactic ALMA redshift survey (BEARS) - II. Millimetre photometry of gravitational lens candidates
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Blum B.
(2024)
Rubin/LSST In-kind Contribution Program Produces Mutual Benefits
in The NOIRLab Mirror
Carracedo Carballal G
(2024)
Bayesian calibration of quasi-static field distortions in HARMONI
in RAS Techniques and Instruments
Collett T
(2023)
The 4MOST Strong Lensing Spectroscopic Legacy Survey (4SLSLS)
D'Odorico V
(2024)
Galaxy formation and symbiotic evolution with the inter-galactic medium in the age of ELT-ANDES
in Experimental Astronomy
Delgado-García G
(2024)
HARMONI at ELT: electronic cabinets design
Delsanti A.
(2023)
Solar System observations with the ESO Extremely Large Telescope
in SF2A-2023: Proceedings of the Annual meeting of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics
El Hadi K
(2024)
MOSAIC at the ELT: front-end and instrument AITV planification
Estrada Piqueras A
(2024)
HARMONI at ELT: architectural trade-off for the low order wavefront sensor subsystem
Euclid Collaboration
(2024)
Euclid. I. Overview of the Euclid mission
Ferreira L
(2023)
The JWST Hubble Sequence: The Rest-frame Optical Evolution of Galaxy Structure at 1.5 < z < 6.5
in The Astrophysical Journal
García-Bernete I
(2024)
Structures Of Dust and gAs (SODA): Constraining the innermost dust properties of II Zw96 with JWST observations of H 2 O and CO
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hagimoto M
(2023)
Bright extragalactic ALMA redshift survey (BEARS) III: detailed study of emission lines from 71 Herschel targets
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Hernández Suárez E
(2024)
HARMONI at ELT: athermal toroidal mirror mount for HARMONI pre-optics
Hernández-González A
(2024)
HARMONI at ELT: verification tests of opto-mechanical mounts for HARMONI pre-optics in cryogenic environment
Holloway P
(2023)
On the detectability of strong lensing in near-infrared surveys
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Holloway P
(2024)
Lens Discovery in the Era of Wide-area Surveys
in Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union
Holloway P
(2024)
A Bayesian approach to strong lens finding in the era of wide-area surveys
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Janssen A
(2024)
Estimate of the environment impact of the ELT instrument MOSAIC
Loupias M
(2024)
HARMONI ELT instrument integral field unit test tools development
Muslimov E
(2024)
Fast camera design options for a panoramic integral field spectrograph
Puech M.
(2023)
MOSAIC: the ELT optical and near-infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph
in SF2A-2023: Proceedings of the Annual meeting of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Shajib A
(2024)
Strong gravitational lenses from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Thatte N
(2024)
HARMONI at ELT: project status and instrument overview
Thatte Niranjan
(2024)
Harmoni
in EAS2024, European Astronomical Society Annual Meeting
Trussler J
(2023)
Seeing sharper and deeper: JWST's first glimpse of the photometric and spectroscopic properties of galaxies in the epoch of reionization
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Vaughan S
(2024)
Behind the mask: can HARMONI@ELT detect biosignatures in the reflected light of Proxima b?
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society