HARMONI : Integral field spectroscopy at 10 milli-arcsecond resolution with the Extremely Large Telescope

Séminaire IPAG de Niranjan Thatte (University of Oxford), jeudi 7 novembre 2019 à 11h00, IPAG seminar room

ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is set to become the world’s largest optical-infrared telescope in a few years’ time. With its enormous collecting area (nearly 1000 m^2), and with an adaptive mirror built-in to routinely achieve diffraction limited resolution (0.01 arcseconds), the ELT is set to transform observational astrophysics in the next decade.

HARMONI will be the “work-horse” first-light integral field spectrograph, fully equipped with multiple flavours of adaptive optics, allowing astronomers to fully exploit the telescope’s grasp, and make break-through discoveries.

I will describe HARMONI’s capabilities, and give a preview of sorts of science questions it can help address, from Pop III stars to exo-planets, from resolved stellar populations in external galaxies to supernovae at high redshift.

I will provide an update on the status of the instrument’s design, and that of its adaptive optics systems – both natural star and laser beacon types