After a journey of over 11,000 km that took him to Chile, to the ESO site at Paranal, a team comprising members of UNIDIA and the ATC (UK) joined him to carry out the final installations.
At an altitude of 2,700 metres, in cool temperatures (southern hemisphere winter), this team set about a few weeks ago connecting the 1,024 fibre-optic links that capture light at the telescope’s focal plane and feed it into the spectrograph.
The DRS (Data Reduction System) team – responsible for the software that will process the data from the detectors – will now take over in September to check that the entire instrument is functioning correctly.
MOONS, a state-of-the-art spectrograph built by a consortium of six countries (the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Portugal, Switzerland and Chile, as well as ESO), will set sail to unlock the secrets of the Universe. Built by an international consortium led by UK ATC at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, and comprising six countries, MOONS represents a major milestone for French science and engineering, notably through the acquisition of brand-new expertise in the use of fibres in cryogenic environments, for which France was responsible. UK ATC led the project, which has been supported from the outset by the CNRS-INSU and the Paris Observatory-PSL. Within the consortium, France was responsible for the fibre link, the slit environment, the shutter and the data reduction pipeline.
Its unique capabilities will enable astronomers to study millions of stars and galaxies, providing unprecedented data for investigating the formation and evolution of galaxies and the structure of our own Milky Way, thereby helping to answer some of astronomy’s biggest questions.
Contacts :
Hector FLORES, French Co-Principal Investigator for the project, LUX, Paris Observatory-PSL, CNRS, hector.flores@obspm.fr
Isabelle GUINOUARD, French Project Manager, UNIDIA, Paris Observatory-PSL, CNRS, isabelle.guinouard@obspm.fr
Frédéric ROYER, DRS Manager, LIRA, Paris Observatory-PSL, CNRS, frederic.royer@obspm.fr
