ESO signs agreement for MOSAIC instrument on the ELT

Today, ESO has signed an agreement with a large international consortium for the design and construction of the Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOSAIC), an instrument for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Able to measure the light from more than two hundred sources at the same time, MOSAIC will be used to trace the growth of galaxies and the distribution of matter from the Big Bang to the present day.

The agreement was signed by ESO’s Director General Xavier Barcons and Alain Schuhl, the Deputy CEO for Science at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the institution leading the MOSAIC consortium. Also in attendance were the MOSAIC Principal Investigator Roser Pello from Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory and Co-Principal Investigator Mathieu Puech from the Paris Observatory, in addition to other dignitaries from ESO, CNRS and the MOSAIC consortium [1]. The signing took place at the ESO Headquarters in Garching, Germany.

MOSAIC is a powerful spectrograph, an instrument that splits light into its component wavelengths so astronomers can determine important properties of astronomical objects, such as their chemical composition or temperature. The instrument will use the widest possible field of view provided by the ELT, operating in both visible and near-infrared light, and will be able to analyse the light for more than two hundred objects simultaneously.

MOSAIC will conduct the first exhaustive inventory of matter in the early Universe, lifting the veil on how matter is distributed within and between galaxies and greatly advancing our understanding of how present-day galaxies formed and evolved. It will also be able to take a close look at the gas surrounding galaxies and identify the chemical elements within it.

ESO’s ELT is currently under construction in Chile’s Atacama Desert, a unique place on Earth to observe the skies. When it sees first technical light later this decade, the ELT will revolutionise what we know about our Universe and make us rethink our place in the cosmos.

Notes

[1] Attendees at the signing ceremony included Pascal Chevrot (Head of the CNRS Directorate of Innovative Instrumental Developments for Research and Observation), Myriam Rodrigues (MOSAIC Systems Engineer, Paris Observatory), Hermine Schnetler (MOSAIC Project Manager, Paris Observatory), Jesus Gallego (MOSAIC Board Co-Chair, Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Michiel Rodenhuis (NOVA Executive Director and Institutional Board member), and the two ESO Council Delegates for France: Karine Perraut (CNRS INSU) and Guy Perrin (Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Paris). 

From ESO, in addition to Xavier Barcons, Suzanne Ramsay (Deputy Instrumentation Programme Manager), Michele Cirasuolo (Instrumentation Programme Manager), Jarle Brinchmann (Director for Science), Claudia Burger (Director of Administration), Andreas Kaufer (Director of Operations), Sara Krauss (Director of Engineering), Adrian Russell (Director of Programmes), Patrick Caillier (MOSAIC Project Manager), Alessandro Meoli (MOSAIC Detector Systems Work Package Manager), Oliver Pfuhl (MOSAIC Project Engineer), Alain Delorme (Acting Head of Contracts & Procurement), Cyrielle Blanc (Contract and Procurement Officer), Roberto Tamai (ELT Programme Manager), Enrico Marchetti (Instrumentation Programme Engineer) and Joël Vernet (Acting ELT Programme Scientist) were present.

More Information

The MOSAIC project is managed by an international consortium composed of research institutes in 13 countries. They are:

• Austria: University of Vienna; Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA);  
• Brazil: National Laboratory for Astrophysics; University of São Paulo;
• Finland: University of Helsinki; Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO, University of Turku;
• France: National Institute for Earth Sciences and Space at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS-CNRS Earth and Space) ; UNité d’Ingénierie et de Développements Instrumentaux pour l’Astrophysique (UNIDIA) and Laboratoire d’étude de l’Univers et des phénomènes eXtrêmes (LUX) at Paris Observatory-PSL; Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology at the University of Toulouse; Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory. Laboratoire Joseph-Louis Lagrange (LAGRANGE);
• Germany: Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam; LSW Heidelberg;
• Italy: INAF – Italian national Institute of Astrophysics;
• Netherlands: Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA); University of Amsterdam
• Portugal: Centro de Investigação em Astronomia/Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto; FCiências.ID – Universidade de Lisboa;
• Spain: Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM); Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC); Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, CSIC-INTA), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)
• Sweden: Stockholm University; Lund University; Uppsala University
• Switzerland: University of Geneva; École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
• United Kingdom: Durham University; University of Oxford / RAL Space
• United States: University of Michigan; Space Telescope Science Institute.

Courtesy of European Southern Observatory