Highlights from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE), a 2nd generation VLT instrument for the VLT

Séminaire IPAG de Roland Bacon (CRAL) & Gérard Zins (IPAG), mardi 15 avril 2014 à 10h30, IPAG seminar room

The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) is a second-generation VLT panoramic integral-field spectrograph. MUSE has a field of 1×1 arcmin² sampled at 0.2×0.2 arcsec² and a simultaneous spectral range of 0.465-0.93 µm, at a resolution of R 3000. The instrument has been designed to take advantage of the VLT ground layer adaptive optics ESO facility using four laser guide stars. MUSE couples the discovery potential of a large imaging device to the measuring capabilities of a high-quality spectrograph, while taking advantage of the increased spatial resolution provided by adaptive optics. After a successful preliminary acceptance in Europe in fall 2013, MUSE has been dismounted, shipped to Chile and re-integrated in the Paranal new integration hall and finally installed on the Nasmyth platform of UT4 late January this year. During the first commissioning run, millions of spectra have been obtained in order to validate the instrument and measured its achieved performance. To demonstrate its power, a number of show-case and spectacular observations have also been obtained. Preliminary results demonstrate that MUSE is likely to become a new reference in the field of integral field spectroscopy thanks to its large field of view, very high throughput, excellent image quality, good spectral resolution, wide simultaneous spectral range and state-of-the art control and data reduction software.