BlueMUSE: ESO signs agreement for new instrument on the VLT

Today, ESO has signed the agreement for the construction of the Blue Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (BlueMUSE), an upcoming instrument for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The signing marks a major first step in the development of BlueMUSE , which will offer new and unique science opportunities to astronomers. Its evolved technology will enable detailed observations within our galaxy, helping study targets as varied as massive stars, nebulae and comets. It will also revolutionise the study of the distant Universe by allowing the detection of the diffuse material in the space between galaxies and helping us understand how matter moves within it.

Earlier today, ESO’s Director General Xavier Barcons and Céline Reylé, the Deputy Director for Science for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), signed the BlueMUSE agreement at the ESO Headquarters in Garching, Germany. The CNRS’s Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (CRAL – CNRS/ENS de Lyon/Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University) is the institution leading the instrument consortium, which consists of multiple institutes from Europe and Australia. Also in attendance were the French Science and Higher Education Attaché for Southern Germany, Emmanuel Delille, the Principal Investigator of BlueMUSE Johan Richard and the Project Manager Rémi Giroud, both from CRAL, in addition to other dignitaries of ESO and the BlueMUSE consortium [1], to commemorate the next step in the instrument’s construction.

Based on the successful technology of the MUSE instrument installed at the VLT, BlueMUSE is an integral-field spectrograph. It is designed to not only capture a 2D image of a target (or multiple targets) but also split the light into its component colours or wavelengths at each pixel, resulting in a full 3D dataset with comprehensive information on the target object. As MUSE has become one of the most productive and requested ESO instruments, the astronomical community has been hoping for a similar instrument for some time — this is now becoming a reality.

While like MUSE in many respects, BlueMUSE will observe in shorter and therefore bluer wavelengths, with higher spectral resolution (how finely it can distinguish between different wavelengths). This means it will strongly complement large ground- and space-based facilities, such as ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, which are optimised to observe in the infrared.

Anticipated to see first-light in 2034, BlueMUSE will enable new science opportunities, beyond those possible with MUSE. It will survey larger samples of massive stars in the Milky Way and its galactic neighbourhood, helping answer key questions about stellar evolution. Further afield, it will be able to observe faint galaxies, as well as starburst galaxies, probing their extreme star-forming environment. BlueMUSE will also be ideally suited to study the distant Universe, in particular to detect the very diffuse, elusive matter that permeates the space between galaxies, as well as to probe the emergence of the first galaxy clusters.

Notes

[1] Attendees at the signing ceremony included Karine Perraut (French ESO Council delegate, from the Institut national des sciences de l’Univers (INSU), CNRS Earth & Space, France), Florence Laurent (BlueMUSE System Engineer at CNRS), Davor Krajnović (BlueMUSE Project Scientist, Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam, Germany), Alexandre Jeanneau (BlueMUSE Lead Optical Engineer at CNRS).

From ESO, in addition to Xavier Barcons, Frédéric Derie (Project Manager), Francesco Belfiore (Project Scientist), Reinhold Dorn (Project Engineer), Michele Cirasuolo (Instrumentation Programme Manager), Suzanne Ramsay (Deputy Instrumentation Programme Manager), Céline Péroux (Programme Scientist), Andrea Capardi (Programme Controller), Enrico Marchetti (Instrumentation Programme Engineer), Emanuela Ciattaglia (Instrumentation Programme Engineer), Diogo Rio Fernandes (Instrumentation Programme Engineer), Alain Delorme (Acting Head of Contracts & Procurement) and Cyrielle Blanc (Contract and Procurement Officer) were present.

More Information

The BlueMUSE project will be built by an international consortium composed of 9 research institutes in multiple countries and ESO. The consortium consists of

• Australia: Australian Astronomical Optics; Macquarie University
• France: Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (CRAL – CNRS/ENS de Lyon/Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University; lead); Astrophysique, Instrumentation & Modélisation (AIM – CEA/CNRS/ Université Paris Cité); Institut de Recherche sur les lois Fondamentales de l’Univers (CEA/Saclay)
• Germany: Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) in association with University of Potsdam and University of Göttingen
• Portugal: Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences
• Sweden: Department of Astronomy, Stockholm University
• Switzerland: Observatoire astronomique de l’Université de Genève; Laboratory of Astrophysics, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
• United Kingdom: Centre for Advanced Instrumentation and Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Physics Department, Durham University

ESO also contributes to the project development.

Courtesy of European Southern Observatory