Foreseen Changes regarding La Silla, Paranal and APEX Instrumentation and Facilities

La Silla

HARPS: regular operations with the Laser Frequency Comb depend on the results of commissioning activities during Period 98 and 99.


Paranal

UT instruments and facilities

  • CRIRES is being transformed into a cross-dispersed échelle spectrograph. The upgraded instrument will replace VIMOS on the Nasmyth B focus of UT3 during the first semester of 2018. VIMOS is likely to be decommissioned in either Period 100 or early in Period 101.
  • Commissioning of ESPRESSO, the Échelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations, will continue until Period 100.
  • ESO is investigating the use of VISIR for a specific experiment with would require its installation at UT4 Nasmyth A (therefore replacing HAWK-I) during 2018 or 2019.

Activities related to the installation of the Adaptive Optics Facility on UT4 (Yepun)

  • The commissioning of the AOF and AOF-related systems will continue to require monthly slots of up to 7 days or bi-monthly 10 to 15-day slots on UT4 until Period 100. 
  • Up to 50 nights of Director's Discretionary Time will be dedicated to observations of one or more deep fields with MUSE, once the adaptive optics module, GALACSI, has been successfully commissioned. A number of proposals were received in response to the Call for ideas and are currently under review.

VLTI instruments and facilites

  • AMBER will likely be decommissioned in the near future.
  • Installation of MATISSE, the Multi AperTure mid-Infrared SpectroScopic Experiment, is expected to start in Period 100 and may affect VLTI operations.
  • The installation and commissioning of the first New Adaptive Optics Module for Interferometry (NAOMI), the low order adaptive optics system for the ATs, is expected to take place during Period 100, during which the corresponding AT will not be available for regular operation for approximately two weeks. The three others will be installed and commissioned during Period 101.
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APEX

  • ZEUS-2: Pending successful commissioning, the redshift (z) and Early Universe Spectrometer (ZEUS-2) may be offered as a PI instrument during future periods. ZEUS-2 is a broadband spectrograph covering 7 telluric windows covering 200 to 850 µm. For details, see Ferkinhoff et al. (2010).
  • Pending successful commissioning, a new single pixel 230 GHz receiver with dual polarization, sideband separated 8 GHz bandwidth per sideband may be offered as of Period 100.
  • If the APEX agreement is extended beyond Period 100, a major telescope upgrade programme will start at the end of 2017. This may result in the telescope being unavailable between November 2017 and April 2018. Time critical observations in this period will not be accepted.