Instrumentation
The telescope will have several science instruments. It will be possible to switch from one instrument to another within minutes. The telescope and dome will also be able to change positions on the sky and start a new observation in a very short time.
Eight different instrument concepts and two post-focal adaptive modules are currently being studied, with the aim that two to three will be ready for first light, with the others becoming available at various points over the following decade. The instruments being studied are:
- CODEX: an R=135 000 optical spectrograph
- EAGLE: a wide-field, multiple integral field unit near-infrared (NIR) spectrograph, with multi-object adaptive optics
- EPICS: a optical/NIR planet imager and spectrograph with extreme adaptive optics
- HARMONI: a single field, wide-band integral field spectrograph
- METIS: a mid-infrared imager and spectrograph
- MICADO: a diffraction-limited near-infrared camera
- OPTIMOS: a wide-field visual multi-object spectrograph
- SIMPLE: a high-spectral-resolution NIR spectrograph
The two post-focal adaptive optics modules currently being studied are:
- ATLAS: a laser tomography adaptive optics module
- MAORY: a multi-conjugate adaptive optics module
Read more about this topic: European Extremely Large Telescope