Foreseen Changes regarding La Silla, Paranal and APEX Instrumentation and Facilities

La Silla

 

Paranal

Overview

The expected Paranal Instrumentation and Facilities to be offered in Period 107 and changes foreseen for Periods 108 and 109 are presented at the overview page.

General

  • Further improvements of the new Phase 1 system (p1) will take place in Period 107 and following.

UT instruments and facilities

  • Depending on successful commissioning during Periods 104 and 105, CRIRES may be off ered in Period 107 following its upgrade into a cross-dispersed echelle spectrograph.
  • ERIS - the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph - is expected to be installed and commissioned during the second semester of 2020 at the UT4 Cassegrain focus. Pending successful commissioning, ERIS will be offered in Period 108.
  • MOONS - the Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph - is expected to be installed at the UT1 Nasmyth A focus during the first quarter of 2022.
  • In P107, and pending successful commissioning ESPRESSO will be offered with a high resolution setting employing a 4x2 binning. This setting introduces a lower read-out noise than the currently offered ones, and will benefit in particular low signal-to-noise observations.

VLTI instruments and facilites

  • Provided successful commissioning, MATISSE may be offered with the GRA4MAT fringe tracker for chopping on ATs and UTs starting in Period 107. In addition, the HIGH+ resolution set-up is expected to be offered for Monitoring Programs starting in Period 107. 
  • Commissioning of the polarimetry mode of PIONIER is ongoing. Depending on the success of the commissioning, the mode may be offered in Period 108.

Survey telescopes and instruments

  • Due to the installation of 4MOST, Period 107 is expected to be the last period of operations of VIRCAM.
  • Similarly, Period 107 is the last period for which the operation of VST and OmegaCAM is guaranteed under the current agreement between ESO and INAF.
 

APEX

  • LABOCA: this 870 µm bolometer array may be replaced by a wider-field camera A-MKID. It is not planned that LABOCA will be offered past Period 106.