ESPRESSO milestone

A big step towards adding ESPRESSO, a new high-resolution spectrograph to the VLT, has been achieved. For the first time, starlight from one of the Unit Telescopes (UT) that make up ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has been successfully channelled 60 metres along a tunnel leading to a new focus in the underground laboratory beneath the VLT platform where ESPRESSO will reside.

Here the tunnel is seen during an alignment test with green laser light reflected from a reference surface 60 metres away.