E-ELT Instrumentation
The STFC are funding research and development into future instruments for the E-ELT, thus ensuring that UK astronomers should be well-placed to benefit from the scientific discoveries that the telescope will deliver in the 2020s and beyond.
The E-ELT Instrumentation Roadmap lays out the plans for future instruments. This includes two first-light instruments, 'ELT-IFU' and 'ELT-CAM', with capabilities similar to Phase A studies called HARMONI and MICADO, respectively. HARMONI is a UK-led project for a visible and near-infrared integral field spectrograph for the E-ELT (PI: Prof. Niranjan Thatte, University of Oxford).
As part of a coordinated programme, the UK is supporting R&D toward other instruments to ensure the maximum long-term benefit for UK astronomers from the E-ELT. This comprises roles in the mid-IR instrument, METIS (selected as the third instrument in the roadmap), in studies of mulit-object spectrographs called EAGLE and OPTIMOS-EVE, and in a planet-finding instrument called EPICS. The UK is also a major partner in the CANARY pathfinder experiment for laser guide star, multi-object adaptive optics (MOAO), which uses the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope in La Palma.
In Autumn 2012 there are a series of meetings pertaining to the future instrument plans, as listed here.
