Getting ISAAC ready for the VLT

This video clip shows the Infrared Spectrometer and Array Camera (ISAAC) for the VLT during its final integration and testing in Europe, prior to installation at the first VLT 8.2-m Unit Telescope (UT1) towards the end of this year.

Like its smaller colleague SOFI at the ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT), cf. ESO Press Release eso9805 (29 January 1998), ISAAC has been built by the Instrumentation Division of ESO. It is a versatile instrument designed to produce both infrared images and spectra of a wide variety of astronomical objects at wavelengths between 1 and 5 microns.

The infrared region of the spectrum is playing an increasingly important role in astronomy and astrophysics and ISAAC will allow Europe's astronomers to make important new observations in this spectral region. The objects to be studied include solar system bodies, star forming regions in the Milky Way and the active nuclei of nearby galaxies.