UVES Team members and project milestones

The table below summarizes the names of some of the people involved in thedevelopment and maintenance of UVES from the beginning to the present:

Built by:
ESO (responsible: H. Dekker)
Project Scientist:
Paranal Instrument Scientists:
C. Ledoux (formerly: A. Kaufer, S. Hubrig, J. Smoker)
STC recommendation:
May 1992
Installation:
Nasmyth B Focus UT2 (Kueyen) in August 1999
Status:
First light achieved September 27th, 1999
Commissioning completed December 21st, 1999
Released to the community: April 1st, 2000
Instrument Science Team:
B. Gustaffson (Uppsala), H. Hensberge (Brussels), P. Molaro (Trieste), P. Nissen (Aarhus)

UVES main science objectives:

  • Structure, physical conditions and abundances of interstellar and intergalactic gas at early epochs from the absorption spectra of high-redshift QSOs
  • Kinematics of gas and stars in galactic nuclei
  • Kinematics and mass distributions of star clusters
  • Composition, kinematics and physical conditions of the interstellar medium in the Galaxy and in nearby systems
  • Chemical composition and atmospheric models of galactic and extragalactic stars
  • Substellar companions of nearby stars (high-precision radial velocity studies over long time scales)
  • Stellar oscillations