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

La Silla

  • Depending on successful commissioning, the Near Infra-Red Planet Searcher (NIRPS) will be offered in Period 106.
  • The installation and commissioning of the Son of X-shooter (SoXS) is expected to start during the third quarter of 2020.
  • As a consequence of the installation of the SoXS, SOFI will be decommissioned, likely during Period 105.
  • EFOSC2 will be decommissioned once SoXS enters regular operation, which is expected to happen in Period 107.

 

Paranal

Overview

An overview of the expected Paranal Instrumentation and Facilities to be offered for Period 105 and changes foreseen in Periods 106 and 107 is available.

UT instruments and facilities

  • MOONS - the Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph - is expected to be installed and commissioned at the UT1 Nasmyth A focus during the second quarter of 2021.
  • Depending on successful commissioning during Period 103, CRIRES will be off ered in Period 105 following its upgrade into a cross-dispersed echelle spectrograph.
  • ERIS is expected to be installed and commissioned during the second quarter of 2020 at the UT4 Cassegrain focus.
  • Depending on successful commissioning during Period 104,  a Fast Detector Readout mode will be offered for MUSE with readout time of 15s.  

VLTI instruments and facilites

  • Depending on a successful commissioning, additional modes for MATISSE may be offered in Period 105.
  • Provided successful commissioning, GRAVITY could be used as a fringe tracker for MATISSE (GRA4MAT) in a future period.
  • ESO is evaluating the possibility of o ffering a focus at the VLTI for a visitor instrument during Period 105. Interested users are invited to consult the VLTI Visitor Focus webpage.

Survey telescopes and instruments

  • Due the installation of 4MOST, Period 107 is expected to be the last period of operations of VIRCAM.
  • Similarly, Period 107 is the last period for which the operation of VST and OmegaCAM is guaranteed under the current agreement between ESO and INAF.
 

APEX

  • LABOCA: this 870 µm bolometer array may be replaced by a wider-field camera, A-MKIDs, in 2019.
  • Backends: A new set of Facility backends with up to 64 GHz of instantaneous bandwidth is expected to be installed on APEX in the second half of 2019. It will serve the instruments SEPIA and nFLASH, allowing to record the full IF bandwidth of all receivers.