ELT Integral field spectrograph
HARMONI is the adaptive optics assisted, visible and near-infrared integral field spectrograph for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), providing the telescope's core spectroscopic capability at first light. It will exploit the ELT's scientific niche in its early years. At close-to-diffraction limited scales, it will capitalise on the D4 sensitivity gains of the ELT, providing unprecedented gains in sensitivity and spatial resolution, which when put together, will transform the landscape in observational visible and near-infrared astronomy.
Science cases
HARMONI is conceived as a workhorse instrument, addressing a diverse set of science cases (and many of the key ELT science cases): including planets and exoplanets, Milky Way and Nearby galaxies, Black Holes, High-z galaxies & Cosmology. HARMONI will have a high complementarity and synergy with ALMA and JWST, with similar angular resolution to the former, and comparable sensitivity to the latter.
Technical proposal
HARMONI is conceptually simple (for a 39 m telescope instrument), and will be easy to calibrate and operate, providing the ELT with a "point and shoot" spectroscopic capability. Although the size and mass of the instrument make it challenging to realise, it is based on a proven concept, and requires no significant R&D before it can be built. The project is currently in the Final Design Phase, with a number of sub-system Critical Design Reviews (CDRs) currently underway.
Consortium
HARMONI is being designed and built by a consortium of institutes in the UK, France and Spain. Additionally, the ESO detector group is also a consortium member.
- UK
- University of Oxford
- United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC)
- Durham University
- Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL-Space)
- France
- Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM)
- Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, France (CRAL)
- Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG)
- L'Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP, Tolouse)
- Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales (ONERA, Paris)
- Spain
Latest news
Spatially resolved Spectroscopy with ELTs - 21-24 Septembre 2020
Postponed to 20-24 Sep 2021
Save the date for the ELT2020 conference at Oxford. The forthcoming generation of Extremely Large Telescope (ELTs) will reach unprecedented spectroscopic sensitivity coupled with high angular resolution in the near infrared. This workshop will bring together the international astronomical community to explore the transformational science that the spectroscopic instrument suites of the ELTs (GMT, TMT and ELT) will achieve. High resolution simulations have played a key role in the development of the instrument science cases providing a quantifiable means to determine feasibility and to predict the scientific outcomes that can be achieved. By bringing together theoreticians, modelers and observers, with interests ranging from exoplanets to cosmology
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