Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2020

JULY-AUGUST 2020 The ELT will be the largest optical to mid-infrared telescope on Earth when it starts operations towards the middle of this decade. With its 39-metre primary mirror and ad- vanced adaptive-optics systems, it will have six times the resolution of the James Webb Space Telescope. METIS will take full advantage of this remarkable telescope and its adaptive optics to probe the struc- ture and composition of objects with revolutionary precision. Among others, METIS is expected to make large contributions to one of the most dynamic and exciting fields of astronomy for both scientists and the public, exoplanets. The instru- ment will be able to study the tem- perature, weather, and seasonal changes of the atmospheres of many giant exoplanets. Further- more, METIS has the potential to di- rectly detect terrestrial exoplanets around the nearest stars and, in favourable cases, investigate their atmospheric composition. Now that the instrument has passed this Preliminary Design Review, the METIS consortium will continue to develop its design in further detail before construction on the instru- ment starts. A rtist depiction of the METIS instrument set to be used with the Extremely Large Telescope upon completion. METIS, short for Mid-in- frared ELT Imager and Spectrograph, will make full use of the giant main mirror of the tele- scope to study a wide range of sci- ence topics, from objects in our Solar System to distant active galaxies. [ESO/METIS Con- sortium/L. Calçada] !