Overview

The expected Paranal Instrumentation and Facilities to be offered in Period of the call and changes foreseen for the following two periods are presented at the overview page.

Instruments and facilities

• MOONS - the Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph – reached full Provisional Acceptance Europe (PAE) in Q4 2024. Due to technical issues the shipping is delayed to November 2025 and commissioning on UT1 Nasmyth A is planned from June to September 2026. The instrument is planned to be fully available in P118, and possibly offered earlier, in P117 (Q4 2026), through the Fast Track Channel.
• The VLT Visitor Focus at UT1 is not available.
• KMOS will host public surveys over 3 years (with a total of 285 nights), starting in P116. This will reduce the amount of open time available, due to increased pressure on UT1
• FORS-Up, the FORS Upgrade project is an upgrade of FORS1. FORS2 will stay in nominal operation until the FORSup upgrade is available. First commissioning of FORS1 without the MXU is planned to occur in P117. During the second commissioning of FORS1, planned for approximately second quarter of 2027 (early P118) the Multi-Object Spectroscopy Unit (MXU) and Polarisation mode will not be available. The full operational capability of FORS-Up, encompassing all current modes, is expected to be achieved during P118.
• SPHERE: A new observation mode is foreseen that enables simultaneous observations with IRDIS’ polarimetric mode (DPI) and the IFS. In addition, it is planned to automatically offset the derotator angle during IRDIS-DPI observations in field-tracking mode to optimize the polarimetric efficiency of the observations.
• MUSE: The seeing-enhanced MUSE narrow field mode (NFM) is planned to be offered in the coming period. This new mode uses a visible wavefront sensor, which will have 70% sky coverage at Galactic Pole and deliver image quality of 0.15"-0.3".
• ERIS - the ability to perform blind offset acquisitions for AO guide stars with RP <18 mag and BP >19 mag (Gaia magnitudes) by using an offset star with BP < 19 mag within 2′ is being implemented and will hopefully be offered in a future period. If successful, this will increase sky coverage of the LGS mode, especially at high galactic latitudes.
• 4MOST: The 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) instrument’s PAE on the VISTA telescope is expected in Q1 2025. The VISTA telescope will be upgraded to facilitate the installation of 4MOST. Operations are expected to start in Q1 2026 at the earliest.
• All the remaining ASGARD modules should be integrated and commissioned over the P117 and P118 periods. It is foreseen that new modules, new modes as well as operations of ASGARD with the UTs will be availabe in the next periods.  Information can be found on the ASGARD website (link to http://www.asgard-vlti.org/).