GRAVITY Commissioning Data Released

Published: 14 May 2017
GRAVITY beam combiner instrument

The VLTI instrument GRAVITY providing phase-referenced optical interferometry was first commissioned in 2016 and commissioning continues in 2017. Selected targets have been observed to demonstrate the capabilities of the instrument, develop observing strategies and optimize the data reduction pipeline. These commissioning data have now been released and are available.

The following targets were observed: η Car, S Cra, BP Cru, SS 433, PDS 456, GJ65, ξ Tel, 24 Cap, BD-12 501, CD-26 996 and CD-35 1962. The GRAVITY commissioning data, and associated calibration data, are packaged separately for each object and telescopes used (ATs or UTs). Further details with links to each target and AT/UT dataset can be found here. GRAVITY Collaboration (2017) provides an overview of the instrument commissioning.