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24-02-2023
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Roadmap Netherlands Instrumentation for the European Extremely Large Telescope

Submitter: Ramon Navarro
Description: NOVA has been awarded nearly 18 million Euros from NWO to develop and build instruments on the future European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in northern Chile.

The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Extremely Large Telescope is under construction on Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert in Chile. With a mirror diameter of 39 meters, the telescope will be the largest optical infrared telescope in the world. The NL-ELT program involves Dutch contributions to three instruments in various stages of development: METIS, MOSAIC and EPICS.

METIS is a mid-infrared instrument of which NOVA is the international project leader. The final design was recently approved and it will be one of the ELT's first operational instruments. Among other things, it is being developed to detect Earth-like planets.

MOSAIC is a multi-object spectrograph, and will use the ELT's enormous luminosity and sharpness to observe hundreds of stars and galaxies simultaneously, and make detailed spectra of them, in both visible and near-infrared light. NOVA is developing the visual spectrographs for this purpose.

NOVA will also develop technology for EPICS, an instrument that will not be built until the mid-2030s. EPICS will be able to study Earth-like planets near other stars in detail. To achieve this challenging ambition, a technology development program will be launched.

Much of the development and construction of the instruments will take place at the NOVA Optical-Infrared Instrumentation Group in Dwingeloo. A team of 25 specialists is working on the instruments. Because the Dutch contribution to the ELT instrumentation involves three different instruments, each in a different stage of development, very efficient use can be made of the group's expertise and facilities. Engineers who first worked on the development of METIS then put the knowledge gained to use for MOSAIC, and later for EPICS.
Copyright: NOVA
 
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