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ESO adjudica contratos para las cámaras del nuevo buscador de planetas
7 de Agosto de 2013
ESO ya ha firmado con la empresa francesa Winlight Systems los contratos correspondientes a la construcción de dos cámaras para el nuevo y potente buscador de exoplanetas, ESPRESSO.
El instrumento ESPRESSO (acrónimo de Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations) es un espectrógrafo de alta estabilidad que se instalará en el Observatorio Paranal de ESO en Chile en el año 2016. Será capaz de combinar la luz de las cuatro Unidades de Telescopios del Very Large Telescope (VLT) para crear un telescopio virtual con una apertura de 16 metros [1]. ESPRESSO está siendo desarrollado por un consorcio conformado por ESO y otros siete institutos científicos:
- Centro de Astrofísica de la Universidad de Oporto (Portugal)
- Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad de Lisboa, el CAAUL (Centro de Astronomia e Astrofísica da Universidade de Lisboa) y el LOLS (Laboratory of Optics, Lasers and Systems) (Portugal)
- INAF - Observatorio Astronómico de Trieste (Italia)
- INAF - Observatorio Astronómico de Brera (Italia)
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (España)
- Instituto de Física de la Universidad de Berna (Suiza)
- Universidad de Ginebra (Suiza).
ESPRESSO continuará la labor del muy exitoso instrumento HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), instalado en el telescopio de 3,6 metros en el Observatorio La Silla de ESO. ESPRESSO no sólo se beneficiará de la enorme capacidad de recolección de luz que se obtiene al combinar las cuatro Unidades de Telescopios de 8,2 metros que forman parte del VLT, sino que además aprovechará las mejoras en la precisión de la estabilidad y la calibración, posibles en la actualidad (por ejemplo, la tecnología de peine de frecuencia láser).
Se espera que ESPRESSO permita a los astrónomos detectar planetas similares a la Tierra alrededor de estrellas cercanas, utilizando el método de la velocidad radial [2]. Además tendrá muchas otras aplicaciones científicas, incluyendo la búsqueda de posibles variaciones en las constantes de la naturaleza durante distintos momentos y en diversas direcciones, a través del estudio de la luz de cuásares muy lejanos.
El nuevo contrato comprende la provisión de las dos cámaras refractivas, una para la zona roja y otra para la región azul del espectro. Estos son componentes vitales del instrumento. Empleando superficies no esféricas (asféricas) y novedosos principios de diseño, logran una excelente calidad de imagen a través de un amplio campo con sólo tres elementos ópticos.
Enlaces
1] ESPRESSO será el primer instrumento en combinar la luz de las cuatro Unidades de Telescopios en un foco incoherente. El instrumento PIONIER ya ha logrado combinar estos cuatro rayos dentro del campo de la interferometría, donde los haces se combinan coherentemente (ann11021).
[2] Cuando un planeta orbita alrededor de una estrella produce una pequeña y continua variación en el componente de la velocidad medido a lo largo de la línea visual (conocido como velocidad radial) de un observador distante situado en la Tierra. Esta variación se puede apreciar como una "oscilación" en el espectro de la estrella, debido a que sus líneas se desplazan hacia delante y hacia atrás con respecto a su posición central, como resultado del efecto Doppler. A medida que el planeta se aleja del observador el cambio de la velocidad radial induce un desplazamiento del espectro de la estrella hacia longitudes de onda más largas (un corrimiento al rojo) y a longitudes de onda más cortas, cuando se acerca (un corrimiento al azul). Estas pequeñas alteraciones en el espectro de la estrella (que corresponden a velocidades extremadamente bajas que llegan a los 10 cm/s; aproximadamente la velocidad que alcanza una tortuga) pueden medirse con un espectrógrafo de alta precisión como el espectrógrafo ESPRESSO, y pueden utilizarse para inferir la presencia de planetas.
Contactos
Hans Dekker
ESPRESSO Instrumentation Engineer at ESO
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6268
Email: hdekker@eso.org
Francesco Pepe
ESPRESSO Prime Investigator
Observatoire Astronomique de l'Université de Genève
Tel +41 22 379 23 96
Email: Francesco.Pepe@unige.ch
Johannes Schimpelsberger
ESO, Contract Officer, Contracts and Procurement
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: + 49 89 3200 6381
Email: jschimpe@eso.org
Richard Hook
ESO, Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org
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