VLTI status update: three years into the second generation

The near-infrared GRAVITY instrument has become a fully operational spectro-imager, while expanding its capability to support astrometry of the key Galactic Centre science. The mid-infrared MATISSE instrument has just arrived on Paranal and is starting its commissioning phase. NAOMI, the new adaptive optics for the Auxiliary Telescopes, is about to leave Europe for an installation in the fall of 2018. Meanwhile, the interferometer infrastructure has continuously improved in performance, in term of transmission and vibrations, when used with both the Unit Telescopes and Auxiliary Telescopes. These are the highlights of the last two years of the VLTI 2nd generation upgrade started in 2015.

Christophe Dupuy | Laurent Jocou | Thibaut Moulin | Luigi Andolfato | Andreas Glindemann | Luca Pasquini | Norbert Hubin | Yves Magnard | Christophe Verinaud | Lorenzo Pettazzi | Johann Kolb | Jean-Philippe Berger | Ralf Conzelmann | Markus Schöller | Andres Pino | Willem-Jan de Wit | Jutta Quentin | Xavier Haubois | Pablo Gutierrez | Pierre Bourget | Pierre Haguenauer | Jean Louis Lizon | Roland Brast | Isabelle Percheron | Javier Reyes | Gérard Zins | Roberto Abuter | Julien Woillez | Pascaline Darré | Sebastien Egner | Frédéric Gonté | Antoine Mérand | Nicolas Schuhler | José Antonio Abad | Emmanuel Aller-Carpentier | Jaime Alonso | Pablo José Barriga | Juan Beltran | Paul Bristow | Luis Caniguante | Angela Cortes | Alain Delboulbé | Françoise Delplancke-Ströbele | Diego Del Valle | Roderick Dembet | Frédéric Derie | Reinaldo Donoso | Philippe Duhoux | Andreas Förster | Eloy Fuenteseca | Robert Frahm | Daniel Gaytan | Jaime Gonzales | Thibaut Guerlet | Sylvain Guieu | Stéphane Guisard | Andreas Haimerl | Pierre van der Heyden | Stefan Huber | Lieselotte Jochum | Paul Jolley | Jean-Paul Kirchbauer | Johan Kosmalski | Peter Krempl | Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin | Samuel Lévêque | Paul Lilley | Pedro Mardones | Alexander Meister | Juan Osorio | Jürgen Ott | Laurent Pallanca | Jérôme Paufique | Marcus Pavez | Thanh Phan Duc | Jean Francois Pirard | Sébastien Poupar | Andres Ramírez | Robert Ridings | Sylvain Rochat | Thomas Rivinius | Fernando Salgado | Pavel Shchekaturov | Christian Stephan | Marcos Suarez | Richard Tamblay | Mario Tapia | Konrad Tristram | Guillermo Valdes

[1]  S. Rabien,et al.  First light for GRAVITY: Phase referencing optical interferometry for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer , 2017, 1705.02345.

[2]  B. Koehler,et al.  VLTI First Fringes with Two Auxiliary Telescopes at Paranal , 2005 .

[3]  Awall,et al.  AN APPROACH TO STABILIZING LARGE TELESCOPES FOR STELLAR INTERFEROMETRY , 2007 .

[4]  Antoine Mérand.  The VLTI roadmap for the next decade , 2018, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[5]  Peter G. Tuthill,et al.  Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging VI , 2016 .

[6]  Frank Eisenhauer,et al.  The 2nd generation VLTI path to performance , 2016, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[7]  Luigi Andolfato,et al.  VLTI status update: a decade of operations and beyond , 2014, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation.

[8]  Christophe Dupuy,et al.  NAOMI: a new adaptive optics module for interferometry , 2014, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation.

[9]  L. Sache,et al.  The ESPRI project: astrometric exoplanet search with PRIMA - I. Instrument description and performance of first light observations , 2012, 1212.2227.

[10]  Christophe Dupuy,et al.  The very large telescope Interferometer: 2010 edition , 2010, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[11]  Christophe Dupuy,et al.  NAOMI: a low-order adaptive optics system for the VLT interferometer , 2016, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[12]  Christophe Dupuy,et al.  VLT interferometer upgrade for the 2nd generation of interferometric instruments , 2016, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[13]  Christophe Dupuy,et al.  The Very Large Telescope Interferometer: an update , 2008, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[14]  Christophe Dupuy,et al.  The Very Large Telescope Interferometer v2012+ , 2012, Other Conferences.

[15]  Christophe Dupuy,et al.  NAOMI: the adaptive optics for the auxiliary telescopes of VLTI , 2018, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[16]  Armin Huber,et al.  First Light for GRAVITY: A New Era for Optical Interferometry , 2017 .

[17]  D. Schertl,et al.  The origin of hydrogen line emission for five Herbig Ae/Be stars spatially resolved by VLTI/AMBER spectro-interferometry , 2008, 0807.1119.

[18]  A. Glindemann,et al.  MATISSE: performance in laboratory, results of AIV in Paranal, and first results on sky , 2018, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[19]  John D. Monnier,et al.  Image-plane fringe tracker for adaptive-optics assisted long baseline interferometry , 2018, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.