A tangled MUSE

A view of the carefully curated tangle of pipes and wires that comprise the MUSE instrument's cryogenic system which provides cooling and vacuum for the 24 MUSE detectors.

The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) second generation instrument for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) is an innovative 3D spectrograph with a wide field of view, providing simultaneous spectra of numerous adjacent regions in the sky. Such spectrographs are efficient explorers of the Universe in three dimensions (two for the sky positions, and one for the wavelengths). Poised to become a unique and powerful tool for discovering objects that cannot be found in imaging surveys, MUSE, which is based on a number of technological developments, is bringing these advantages to a level never achieved before.