Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2018

33 MAY-JUNE 2018 SPACE CHRONICLES Thomas Henning, director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, and MATISSE co-principal investigator, comments: “By looking at the inner regions of protoplanetary discs with MATISSE, we hope to learn the ori- gin of the various minerals con- tained in these discs —minerals that will later go on to form the solid cores of planets like the Earth.” Walter Jaffe, the project scientist and co-principal investigator from University of Leiden in the Nether- lands, and Gerd Weigelt, co-principal investigator from the Max Planck In- stitute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), Bonn, Germany, add: “MATISSE will give us dramatic images of planet- forming regions, multiple stars, and, when working with the VLT Unit Tel- escopes, also the dusty discs feeding supermassive black holes. We hope also to observe details of exotic ob- jects in our Solar System, such as vol- canoes on Io, and the atmospheres of giant exoplanets.” MATISSE is a four-way beam com- biner, meaning it combines the light collected from up to four of the 8.2- metre VLT Unit Telescopes or up to four of the Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) pattern that contains information about the appearance of the object, from which an image can then be reconstructed. MATISSE’s first light marks a big step forward in the scope of current op- tical/infrared interferometers and will allow astronomers to obtain in- terferometric images with finer de- tail over a wider wavelength range than currently possible. MATISSE will also complement the instruments planned for ESO’s up- coming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), in particular METIS (the Mid- infrared ELT Imager and Spectro- graph). MATISSE will observe brighter objects than METIS, but with higher spatial resolution. Andreas Glindemann, MATISSE proj- ect manager at ESO, concludes: “Making MATISSE a reality has in- volved the work of many people over many years and it is wonderful to see the instrument working so well. We are looking forward to the exciting science to come!” T his image is a colourised version of the first MATISSE interferometric obser- vations of the star Sirius, combining data from four Auxiliary Telescopes of the VLT. The colours represent the changing wavelengths of the data, with blue showing the shorter wavelengths and red the longer. The observations were made in the infrared, so these are not the colours that would be seen with the human eye. [ESO/MATISSE consortium] that make up the VLTI, performing both spectroscopic and imaging ob- servations. In doing so, MATISSE and the VLTI together possess the imag- ing power of a telescope up to 200 metres in diameter, capable of pro- ducing the most detailed images ever at mid-infra- red wavelengths. Initial tests were made with the Auxiliary Tele- scopes, and fur- ther observations with the four VLT Unit Telescopes are planned dur- ing the next few months. MATISSE superim- poses the light of an astronomical object from the combined light of multiple tele- scopes, resulting in an interference T his picture shows the team celebrating the successful first light observations. [ESO/MATISSE consortium] !