On 18 October 2025, the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) facility, installed on the VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory, obtained its first light. This is a crucial milestone towards the start of scientific observations with this new spectroscopic facility. The First Light observations exemplify the unique capabilities of 4MOST. They covered an area of the sky containing the Sculptor Galaxy and the NGC288 star cluster showing 4MOST ability to observe a very large field of view and its capability to get spectra for many very different objects and science cases simultaneously.
4MOST First Light
Published: 22 Oct 2025
The fist observations with 4MOST targets the sky around the Sculptor Galaxy NGC 253 and the globular cluster NGC 288. The 4MOST’s field of view is shown by the blue contours, while each coloured circles correspond to one of the more than 2400 fibres. The inset images show the spectrum of a star (right) and the spectrum of a globular cluster in NGC 253.