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MPIfR Optical & Infrared Interferometry Group


K.-H. Hofmann, R.G. Petrov, F. Malbet and A. Richichi:

Amber: the near infrared - red focal instrument for the VLTI

Astronomische Gesellschaft Meeting Abstracts (AGM 14, L06)
Talk presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft
at Heidelberg, September 14-19, 1998


Abstract. AMBER is the near infrared focal instrument of the VLTI. Its operation will start in 2001 with two 8 meter telescopes (UTs) but it will eventually permit to combine 3 or even 4 beams from (UTs) and/or from 1.8 m auxiliary telescopes (ATs) and to perform phase closure imaging. In 2003, the spectral coverage will be extended to include the H alpha region. The instrument is built by a consortium of French, Italian and German Institutes.
The main features of the VLTI + Amber ensemble are: partially correcting adaptive optics and spatial filtering in each beam, fringe tracking, multi-axial beam combiner and spectrograph dispersing the fringes on a mosaic detector. The reference star for the wavefront and the fringe sensors can be up to 25 arcseconds away from the science source.
The scientific program of such an instrument is quite wide. A preliminary selection of the first objectives contains the direct detection of hot massive planets, AGNs and Young Stellar Objects.

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Last modified on 06-Nov-98.
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