Probing Unexplored Territories with MUSE:
a Second-Generation Instrument for the VLT

Roland Bacon[1] , Svend-Marian Bauer[2], Petra Böhm[2], Didier Boudon[1] , Sylvie Brau-Nogue[6]
Patrick Caillier[1], Lionel Capoani[1], C. Marcella Carollo[3], Nicolas Champavert[1], Thierry Contini[6]
Eric Daguise[1], Didier Dalle[1], Bernard Delabre[4], Julien Devriendt[1], Stefan Dreizler[5], Jean-Pierre Dubois[1]
Michel Dupieux[6], Jean-Pierre Dupin[6], Eric Emsellem[1], Pierre Ferruit[1], Marijn Franx[7], Gérard Gallou[6]
Joris Gerssen[2], Bruno Guiderdoni[1], Thomas Hahn[2], Denni Hofmann[5], Aurélien Jarno[1], Andreas Kelz[2]
Christof Koehler[5], Wolfram Kollatschny[5], Johan Kosmalski[1], Florence Laurent[1], Simon J. Lilly[3],
Jean-Louis Lizon[4], Magali Loupias[1], Stéphanie Lynn[1], Antonio Manescau[4], Richard M. McDermid[7]
Christian Monstein[3], Harals Nicklas[5], Laurent Parès[6], Luca Pasquini[4], Emmanuel Pécontal[1]
Arlette Pécontal-Rousset[1], Roser Pello[6], Chantal Petit[1], Jean-Pierre Picat[6], Emil Popow[2]
Andreas Quirrenbach[7], Roland Reiss[4], Edgar Renault[1], Martin Roth[2], Joop Schaye[7], Geneviève Soucail[6]
Matthias Steinmetz[2], Stefan Ströbele[4], Remko Stuik[7], Peter Weilbacher[2], Herve Wozniak[1]
P. Tim de Zeeuw[7]

[1] CRAL – Observatoire de Lyon, France, [2] Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, Germany
[3] ETH Zürich, Institute of Astronomy, Zürich, Switzerland
[4] ESO, [5] Institute for Astrophysics Göttingen, Germany, [6] LAOMP – Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, France
[7] Sterrewacht Leiden, the Netherlands

ABSTRACT: The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) is a second-generation VLT panoramic integral-field spectrograph presently under preliminary design study. MUSE has a field of 1 × 1 arcmin2 sampled at 0.2 × 0.2 arcsec2 and is assisted by the VLT ground layer adaptive optics ESO facility using four laser guide stars. The simultaneous spectral range is 0.465–0.93 μm, at a resolution of R ~ 3000. 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. MUSE has also a high spatial resolution mode with 7.5 × 7.5 arcsec2 field of view sampled at 25 milli-arcsec. In this mode MUSE should be able to obtain diffraction-limited data cubes in the 0.6–0.93 μm wavelength range.