The Very Large Telescope is one of the best ground-based telescopes. A new instrument on the VLT has made it better.
The first test observations of the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph were carried out in February of this year. The European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, an international organization which coordinates the use of VLT and several other observatories, says this instrument will lead the way in solar system, exoplanet and galaxy observations.
This is confirmed by the first official image from ERIS. The image above is a comparison of the view of ERIS and the image of the same galaxy taken with NACO.
The new instrument shows the universe in a way that's amazing. The constellation Fornax has a location 45 million light-years away from Earth. There is a clearer picture of the gas and dusty ring that lies at the center of the galaxy with a view of the bright spots in the surrounding ring.
A state-of-the-art IR imager, the NIX imager, and an integral-field spectrograph are included in the ERIS instrument. It is possible to see the effects of Earth's atmosphere in real time. ERIS will be active for at least ten years and is expected to make significant contributions to astronomy, ranging from distant galaxies and black holes through to exoplanets and dwarf planets in our own Solar System.
ERIS will fulfill its main scientific objectives, but it will also be used for a wide variety of other science cases, according to a press release.
The upgrade to ERIS on the Unit Telescope 4 will provide essential improvements to the facility for the next decade.
The principal investigator of the ERIS consortium is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Many science projects can now benefit from the exquisite resolution and sensitivity of the instrument thanks to the efforts of all those involved in the project.
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