Daily Image

13-10-2009
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X-shooter available for science

Submitter: Ramon Navarro
Description: The image shows X-shooter mounted on the Cassegrain focus of VLT KEUYEN - UT2. Commissioning, Paranalization and Science verification runs have been now been finished and as of October 1st X-shooter is available to the community for science observations. 150 proposals have been submitted for the first observing period #84, a record high for a new instrument, which results in a oversubscription ratio higher than on the Hubble Space Telescope.

X-shooter is a seeing limited instrument, consisting of three spectrographs, covering the entire range from 300nm to 2500nm at medium resolution (R= 6000-10000) in a single shot. The Dutch contribution is the NIR spectrograph and is a combined effort of the University of Amsterdam, Radboud University Nijmegen, NWO and NOVA-ASTRON, Other European partners in the X-shooter project are France, Italy, Denmark, and ESO.

Visible on the image are the white mirror Cell, supporting the 8.2m VLT main mirror, with X-shooter attached to it. The round NIR spectrograph is clearly visible in the middle of the picture, the rectangular VIS spectrograph is below and the UV spectrograph is only partly visible behind the NIR Spectrograph. The Control Electronics are located in the white boxes left and right on the image. Everything is mounted on the blue structure that rotates with respect to M1 during observations.
Copyright: © NOVA-ASTRON - Ramon Navarro
 
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