Future VLT Instruments: ERIS

Published: 28 Jun 2013
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ERIS, the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph, is a 1-5 µm instrument for the Cassegrain focus of UT4 at the VLT. It will benefit from the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF), including the deformable secondary mirror (DSM).

ERIS consists of three main instrumental modules:

  1. an AO module, using the AOF DSM and one AOF laser, providing natural and laser guide star adaptive optics correction;

  2. diffraction limited imaging, sparse aperture masking and pupil plane coronagraphy capabilities from 1-5 µm with a 2k x 2k NIR detector;

  3. a refurbished version of the SPIFFI spectrograph, the 1-2.5 µm integral field unit currently in SINFONI, slightly modified for ERIS.

ERIS is in the preliminary design phase and is due for installation on the VLT in 2017; an announcement has been issued. More details about ERIS can be found here.


A full listing of the instrumentation development and upgrade projects is available here.