Annual Report 2011 Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

12 I. General
in December 2009, the LBT has become a productive
world-class observatory.
In 2007, MPIA became the University of Hawaii’s
largest Partner in the international Pan-StarrS1 (PS1)
project (see chapter IV.1), which grants full access
rights to the data from a 1.8 m wide-field telescope on
Haleakala/Maui (Hawaii) with a new 1.4 Gigapixel camera
– the largest digital camera ever built. Since 2010,
PS1 provided MPIA scientists with regular survey data.
These collaborations enable MPIA astronomers to observe
the northern and the southern sky with first class
telescopes. At the same time the MPIA is participating in
studies for the instrumentation of next-generation large
telescopes, the so-called Extremely Large Telescopes
(ELTs).
Instrumentation for Ground-based Astronomy
The currrent activities of the MPIA in the area of groundbased
instrumentation concentrate on interferometric instruments
for the eSo VLT Interferometer (VLTI), highfidelity
imaging instruments for the LBT and the VLT,
and survey instruments for Calar Alto. The MPIA is
also involved in studies for future instruments for the
European ELT (E-ELT).
VLTI instrumentation
In September 2008, the differential delay lines for the
dual-feed VLTI system priMa were installed on Cerro
Paranal, Chile. These units were built by the MPIA together
with Geneva Observatory and the Landessternwarte
Heidelberg. priMa is now in its active commissioning
phase. In the related science project eSpri, the differential
delay lines will be used in the combined K-band light
with two 1.8 m VLT Auxiliary Telescopes, in order to
measure the separation of a stellar target from a reference
star with micro-arcsecond precision. The goal is
the dynamical determination of the masses of extrasolar
planets by precise astrometric measurements of the
orbital reflex-motions of planetary host stars.
MPIA is participating in the second-generation VLTI
projects MatiSSe and gravity. MatiSSe is a successor of
the very successful Midi instrument built by the MPIA
which has been in operation on Paranal since September
2003. The MatiSSe consortium consists of nine institutes
led by the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur. MatiSSe will
combine the light from all four VLT 8.2 m telescopes in
the mid-infrared for high spatial resolution image reconstruction
on angular scales of 10 – 20 milliarcseconds.
The scientific applications range from studies of Active
Galactic Nuclei (AGN) to the formation of planetary systems
and of massive stars, and the study of circumstellar
environments.
gravity is the successor of priMa. Like MatiSSe it
will combine four VLT 8.2 m telescopes, but in the
near-infrared. The gravity consortium is led by MPE
Garching; the partners include MPIA, l’Observatoire de
Paris, and the University of Cologne. Assisted by a highperformance
adaptive optics system, gravity will provide
precision narrow-angle astrometry and phase referenced
imaging of faint objects over a field of view of 2.
This will permit astronomers to study motions to within
a few times the event horizon size of the massive black
hole in the Galactic Center, and potentially test General
Relativity in its strong field limit. Other applications are
the direct detection of intermediate mass black holes in
the Galaxy, dynamical mass determinations of extrasolar
planets, the origin of protostellar jets, and the imaging of
stars and gas in obscured regions of AGNs, star forming
regions, or protoplanetary disks.
High-resolution cameras
After its integration at MPIA, Luci 1, the first of two
identical mid-infrared cryogenic imaging cameras and
multi-object spectrographs for the LBT, was shipped
to Mt. Graham in August 2008, followed by phases
of installation and commissioning. This instrument
built together with the Landessternwarte Heidelberg,
the MPE Garching, the University of Bochum, and
the Fachhochschule for Technology and Design in
Mannheim, has become ready for scientific exploitation
in December 2009. It provides a 44 field-of-view
in seeing limited mode. At the beginning of 2010 the
first excellent spectra and images have been published.
With the adaptive secondary mirrors (the first one was
installed at the LBT in 2010), diffraction-limited performance
can be expected for the two Luci instruments over
a field of about 0. 5 0. 5. Adaptive optics will also permit
users to achieve spectral resolving powers of several
tens of thousands. Scientific applications for the multimode
Luci instruments are many, including studies of
star formation in nearby galaxies.
The by far largest instrumentation project at the MPIA
is the near-infrared beam combiner linc-nirvana for the
LBT, which presently is being assembed at the institute.
As the PI institute, the MPIA leads a consortium with
the Italian Observatories (Inaf), the MPIfR Bonn, and
the University of Cologne. linc-nirvana is currently undertaking
integration and testing at the MPIA as the various
subsystems provided by the different project partners
are being delivered. By coherent combination of the two
LBT primary mirrors via Fizeau interferometry, lincnirvana
will provide diffraction-limited imaging over
a 10. 5 10. 5 field of view in the 1 – 2.4 μm regime,
with the spatial resolution of a 23 m telescope. Multiconjugated
adaptive optics with up to 20 natural guide
stars will ensure large sky coverage. Due to the panoramic
high-resolution imaging and astrometric capabilities
of linc-nirvana, scientific applications range from
supernova cosmology, galaxy formation, and extragalactic
stellar populations and star formation, to extrasolar