Annual Report 2011 Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

14 I. General
Credit: eSo/l. calçada
year. The Hat-South project is a collaboration between
Harvard, the Australian National University, and MPIA.
Instruments for next generation telescopes
In 2010, an eSo commission led by MPIA already finished
the search for the site of the planned 39 m E-ELT.
It will be the mountain Cerro Armazones in Chile’s
Atacama Desert (after intensive studies of various
suitable places in the world including Spain, Argentina,
and Tibet).
In preparation for the future with this awesome
telescope, MPIA has participated in two studies for
instruments: MetiS and Micado. The MetiS concept is
a thermal/mid-infrared imager and spectrograph whose
wavelength coverage will range from 3 –14 microns. A
wide range of selectable resolving powers is planned.
Adaptive optics will permit diffraction-limited obser-
vations. Science cases are conditions in the early solar
system, formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks,
studies of the galactic center and of the luminous centers
of nearby galaxies, high-redshift AGNs and high-redshift
gamma ray bursts.
In December 2008, several concepts of the Micado
study were evaluated and down-selected for a phase A
study. Micado is a near-infrared imaging camera with
multi-conjugated adaptive optics that will provide a
Fig. I.2.4: The European Extremely Large Telescope, E-ELT.
spatial resolution exceeding that of the James Webb
Space Telescope (JWST) by a factor of 6 to 7. It will
have a sensitivity down to 29 mag in bandpasses from I
to K. Applications range from young stellar objects in our
galaxy to star formation in high-redshift galaxies. The
achievable astrometric precision will further advance
studies of stellar orbits around the black hole in the
galactic center and of the proper motions of globular
clusters in the galactic halo. With Micado, detailed mapping
will be possible on scales as small as 80 pc of the
structure, the stellar populations, and the interstellar dust
distribution in galaxies with redshifts z 1.
Instrumentation for Space-based Astronomy
Europe’s new far infrared and submillimetre space observatory
HerSchel has started its four year long mission
with a picture-perfect launch aboard an ariane-5 rocket
on 14 th May 2009. The MPIA has been one of the major
partners in the development of the Pacs instrument
which enables imaging and spectroscopy in the wavelength
range from 60 to 210 mm with unprecedented
sensitivity and spatial resolution. The MPIA has been responsible
for delivering the pacS focal plane chopper and
for characterizing the large Ge:Ga spectrometer cameras
and their –270 C readout electronics.
After successful delivery and check-out of the pacS
hardware contributions, MPIA has been heavily involved
in many pacS Instrument Control Center tasks.