ESO signs a construction agreement for the ANDES instrument on the ELT
ESO today signed an agreement with an international consortium of institutions for the design and construction of ANDES, the ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph. The ANDES instrument will be installed on ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). It will be used to search for signs of life on exoplanets and the very first stars, as well as to test variations in the fundamental constants of physics and measure the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe.
The agreement was signed by Xavier Barcons, Director General of ESO, and Roberto Ragazzoni, President of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), the institution leading the ANDES consortium. Sergio Maffettone, Italian Consul General in Munich, and Alessandro Marconi, ANDES Principal Investigator at INAF, as well as other representatives of ESO, INAF, the ANDES consortium and the Italian Consulate in Munich, also attended the signing ceremony. The signing took place at ESO headquarters in Garching, Germany.
Formerly known as HIRES, ANDES is a powerful spectrograph, an instrument that breaks light down into its different wavelengths so that astronomers can determine important properties of astronomical objects, such as their chemical composition. The instrument will have record precision in the visible and near-infrared wavelengths and, combined with the ELT’s mirror system (a giant primary mirror 39m in diameter generated by the association of 798 hexagons each 1.40 metres wide), it will open the way to research covering multiple fields of astronomy.
“ANDES is an instrument with enormous potential for groundbreaking scientific discoveries, which can profoundly affect our perception of the Universe, far beyond the small community of scientists,” says Marconi. Céline Péroux, scientific leader of the ESO team responsible for monitoring ANDES, adds that the scientific cases range “from the potential detection of signatures of life on other worlds and the identification of the very first generation of stars, to the study of variations in the fundamental constants of physics”.
While ANDES will carry out detailed surveys of the atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets, enabling astronomers to search for signs of life on a large scale. It will also be able to analyze the chemical elements present in distant objects in the young Universe, making it probably the first instrument capable of detecting the signatures of population III stars, the first stars born in the Universe. In addition, astronomers will be able to use ANDES data to check whether the fundamental constants of physics vary with time and space. Its comprehensive data will also be used to directly measure the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe, one of the most pressing mysteries of the cosmos.
ESO’s ELT is currently under construction in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. When it goes into service at the end of the decade, the ELT will be the world’s largest sky observatory in the visible to near-infrared wavelengths, marking a new era in ground-based astronomy.
ANDES: an international project
The ANDES project is being developed by an international consortium of research institutes from 13 countries:
- Allemagne: Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Institut für Astrophysik und Geophysik, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (IAG), Atmospheric Physics of Exoplanets Department, Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie Heidelberg (MPIA), Zentrum für Astronomie, Universität Heidelberg (ZAH), Thüringer Landesternwarte Tautenburg (TLS), Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences, Department of Physics, Hamburg Observatory, Universität Hamburg (UHH).
- Brésil: Board of Stellar Observational Astronomy, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte.
- Canada: Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic and the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets, Université de Montréal.
- Danemark: Instrument Centre for Danish Astrophysics on behalf of Niels Bohr Institute, Aarhus University, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet.
- Espagne: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CI); Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, Spain) on behalf of Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA), Centro de Astrobiología de Madrid (CSIC-INTA).
- France: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) on behalf of Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Université Côte d’Azur (LAGRANGE), Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, Aix-Marseille Université, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (LAM), Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie, Université Toulouse III-Paul Sabatier (IRAP), Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, Université Grenoble-Alpes (IPAG), Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier, Université de Montpellier (LUPM), Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, Sorbonne Université (IAP), Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Ecole Polytechnique, Sorbonne Université (LMD).
- Italie: INAF, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (Lead Technical Institute).
- Pologne: Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun.
- Portugal: Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) at Centro de Investigaço em Astronomia/Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (CAUP), Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço at Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Board of the Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências (FCiências.ID)
- Royaume-Uni: Science and Technology Facilities Council, United Kingdom Research and Innovation on behalf of Cavendish Laboratory & Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge UK Astronomy Technology Centre; Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences, Heriot-Watt University.
- Suède: Lund University, Stockholm University, Uppsala University.
- Suisse: Département d’Astronomie, Université de Genève; Physikalische Institut, Universität Bern.
- USA: Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan
Further Resources
IRAP Contact
- Pascal Petit, pascal.petit@irap.omp.eu
