ELT Infrastructure PCS 2023-2026
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Oxford Physics
Abstract
The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in the Atacama Desert in Chile, will be the largest visible and infrared light telescope in the world.
It will explore the early universe and other worlds in unprecedented detail and provide clearer observations of cosmic objects than ever before. The UK is one of 16 ESO member states funding the construction of the state-of-the-art telescope.
This grant enables essential design and development work as part of delivering the full instrumentation suite for the ELT, which will allow scientists to analyse data collected by the telescope and fully utilise the power of this ground-breaking new facility.
In particular this part of the overall project is focusing on the Planetary Camera and Spectrograph (PCS) for the ELT, which will allow the characterisation of the atmosphere of extra-solar planets, essential to determine how planetary systems form, and if these planets are habitable, or inhabited.
In particular we are carrying out research and development (R&D) on the integral field spectrograph (IFS) of PCS, in order to establish which technology at the heart of the Spectrograph, image-slicers or lenslet-arrays, will allow us to achieve the best sensitivity to detect the very faint extra-solar planets next to their host star, also called contrast ratio.
It will explore the early universe and other worlds in unprecedented detail and provide clearer observations of cosmic objects than ever before. The UK is one of 16 ESO member states funding the construction of the state-of-the-art telescope.
This grant enables essential design and development work as part of delivering the full instrumentation suite for the ELT, which will allow scientists to analyse data collected by the telescope and fully utilise the power of this ground-breaking new facility.
In particular this part of the overall project is focusing on the Planetary Camera and Spectrograph (PCS) for the ELT, which will allow the characterisation of the atmosphere of extra-solar planets, essential to determine how planetary systems form, and if these planets are habitable, or inhabited.
In particular we are carrying out research and development (R&D) on the integral field spectrograph (IFS) of PCS, in order to establish which technology at the heart of the Spectrograph, image-slicers or lenslet-arrays, will allow us to achieve the best sensitivity to detect the very faint extra-solar planets next to their host star, also called contrast ratio.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Matthias Tecza (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
