Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2018

22 SPACE CHRONICLES First light for ESPRESSO by ESO T he Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) successfully made its first observations in November 2017. Installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, ESPRESSO will search for exoplanets with unprecedented precision by look- ing at the minuscule changes in the properties of light coming from their host stars. For the first time ever, an instrument will be able to sum up the light from all four VLT telescopes and achieve the light collecting power of a 16-metre telescope. This pic- ture shows a group picture of the happy first light team on the platform at Paranal, with the VLT in the background. [Giorgio Calderone, INAF Trieste] E SPRESSO has achieved first light on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. ESPRESSO was de- signed and built by a consortium consisting of: the Astronomical Ob- servatory of the University of Geneva and University of Bern, Switzerland; INAF–Osservatorio As- tronomico di Trieste and INAF–Os- servatorio Astronomico di Brera, Italy; Instituto de Astrofísica de Ca- narias, Spain; Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto and Universidade de Lis- boa, Portugal; and ESO. The co-prin- cipal investigators are Francesco Pepe (University of Geneva, Switzer- land), Stefano Cristiani (INAF–Osser- vatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Italy), Rafael Rebolo (IAC, Tenerife, Spain) and Nuno Santos (Instituto de As- trofisica e Ciencias do Espaco, Uni- versidade do Porto, Portugal). This new, third-generation echelle spectrograph is the successor to ESO’s hugely successful HARPS in- strument at the La Silla Observatory.