CODEX: Measuring the Expansion of the Universe (and beyond)

Luca Pasquini[1], Stefano Cristiani [2], Hans Dekker[1], Martin Haehnelt [3], Paolo Molaro[2], Francesco Pepe[4], Gerardo Avila[1], Bernard Delabre[1], Sandro D’Odorico[1], Jochen Liske[1], Peter Shaver[1], Piercarlo Bonifacio [2], Stefano Borgani [2], Valentina D’Odorico [2], Eros Vanzella [2], François Bouchy[4], Miroslava Dessauges-Lavadsky[4], Cristoph Lovis [4], Michel Mayor [4], Didier Queloz [4], Stéphane Udry[4], Michael Murphy[3], Matteo Viel [3], Andrea Grazian[5], Sergei Levshakov[6], Lauro Moscardini [7], Tommy Wiklind[8], Shay Zucker[9]

[1] ESO,
[2] INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Italy
[3] Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University, United Kingdom
[4] Observatoire de Genève, Switzerland,
[5] INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Italy
[6] Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
[7] University of Bologna, Italy,
[8] ESA-STScI
[9] Weizmann Institute of Science, Tel Aviv, Israel

ABSTRACT: CODEX, a high-resolution, super-stable spectrograph to be fed by OWL, the most powerful telescope ever conceived, will for the first time provide the possibility of directly measuring the change of the expansion rate of the Universe with time … and much more. The concept of this instrument has been studied in a collaboration launched by ESO in July 2004 together with INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University, and the Observatoire de Genève.