Near Infra-Red Planet Searcher (NIRPS) integration on the 3.6m is expected to start in mid-2019.

Overview

An overview of the expected Paranal Instrumentation and Facilities to be offered for Period 103 and changes foreseen in Periods 104 and 105 is available.

UT instruments and facilities

• As NACO will be decommissioned at the end of Period 103, it will not be offered in Period 104.
• ESO is evaluating the possibility of offering the UT1 Nasmyth A focus for a visitor instrument during Period 104. Interested users are invited to consult the following webpages: Visitor Focus and Applications for Use of the VLT Visitor Focus.
• MOONS - the Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph - is expected to be installed and commissioned at the UT1 Nasmyth A focus during the first quarter of 2021.
  
• VISIR will be back for operations on UT3 at the end of 2019.
• Depending on successful commissioning during Period 102 and 103, CRIRES will be offered in Period 104 following its upgrade into a cross-dispersed echelle spectrograph.
  
• As SINFONI will be decommissioned during Period 103, it will not be offered anymore.
  
• Indeed, SPIFFI (the Integral Field Unit of SINFONI) will be upgraded and integrated within ERIS – a High angular resolution camera and 3D spectrograph using the AOF. ERIS is expected to be installed and commissioned during the first semester of 2020 at the UT4 Cassegrain focus.
  

VLTI instruments and facilites

• GRAVITY: Provided successful commissioning, CIAO in the on-axis mode may be offered in Period 104.
• Depending on a successful commissioning, additional modes for MATISSE may be offered in Period 104.
• Provided successful commissioning, GRAVITY could be used as a fringe tracker for MATISSE (GRA4MAT) in a future period.
• ESO is evaluating the possibility of offering a focus at the VLTI for a visitor instrument during Period 104. Interested users are invited to consult the following webpages: Visitor Focus and Applications for Use of the VLT Visitor Focus.

• 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 2018. It will serve the instruments SEPIA and nFLASH, allowing to record the full IF bandwidth of all receivers.