Agreement signed to build HARMONI spectrograph for the E-ELT

ESO has signed an agreement with an international consortium of institutes for the design and construction of the HARMONI instrument for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).

The agreement was signed by Grahame Blair, Executive Director of Programmes, Science and Technology Facilities Council, on behalf of the consortium, and Tim de Zeeuw, ESO Director General, at a ceremony at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, on 22 September 2015.

HARMONI, or the High Angular Resolution Monolithic Optical and Near-infrared Integral field spectrograph, will be one of the first-light instruments installed on the giant telescope and will function as the workhorse instrument for visible light and near-infrared spectroscopy in the wavelength range 0.5–2.4 µm.

This picture shows (from left): Ian Bryson, Matthias Tecza, Joël Vernet, ESO Director General Tim de Zeeuw, Vanessa Ferraro-Wood, Niranjan Thatte,  Grahame Blair, Peter Hammersley, Hermine Schnetler and Fraser Clarke.