Bibcode
Mégevand, D.; Zerbi, Filippo M.; Di Marcantonio, Paolo; Cabral, Alexandre; Riva, Marco; Abreu, Manuel; Pepe, Francesco; Cristiani, Stefano; Rebolo, R.; Santos, Nuno C.; Dekker, Hans; Aliverti, Matteo; Allende Prieto, C.; Amate, M.; Avila, Gerardo; Baldini, Veronica; Bandy, Timothy; Bristow, Paul; Broeg, Christopher; Cirami, Roberto; Coelho, João.; Conconi, Paolo; Coretti, Igor; Cupani, Guido; D'Odorico, Valentina; De Caprio, Vincenzo; Delabre, Bernard; Dorn, Reinhold; Figueira, Pedro; Fragoso, A.; Galeotta, Samuele; Genolet, Ludovic; Gomes, Ricardo; González Hernández, J. I.; Hughes, Ian; Iwert, Olaf; Kerber, Florian; Landoni, Marco; Lizon, Jean-Louis; Lovis, Christophe; Maire, Charles; Mannetta, Marco; Martins, Carlos C. J. A. P.; Molaro, Paolo; Monteiro, Manuel A. S.; Moschetti, Manuele; Oliveira, Antonio; Zapatero Osorio, Maria Rosa; Poretti, Ennio; Rasilla, J. L.; Santana Tschudi, S.; Santos, Pedro; Sosnowska, Danuta; Sousa, Sérgio; Tenegi, F.; Toso, Giorgio; Vanzella, Eros; Viel, Matteo
Bibliographical reference
Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 9147, id. 91471H 18 pp. (2014).
Advertised on:
7
2014
Citations
28
Refereed citations
13
Description
ESPRESSO is the next generation ground based European exoplanets hunter.
It will combine the efficiency of modern echelle spectrograph with
extreme radial-velocity and spectroscopic precision. It will be
installed at Paranal's VLT in order to achieve two magnitudes gain with
respect to its predecessor HARPS, and the instrumental radial-velocity
precision will be improved to reach 10 cm/s level. We have constituted a
Consortium of astronomical research institutes to fund, design and build
ESPRESSO on behalf of and in collaboration with ESO, the European
Southern Observatory. The spectrograph will be installed at the Combined
Coudé Laboratory (CCL) of the VLT, it will be linked to the four
8.2 meters Unit Telescopes through four optical "Coudé trains"
and will be operated either with a single telescope or with up to four
UTs, enabling an additional 1.5 magnitude gain. Thanks to its
characteristics and ability of combining incoherently the light of 4
large telescopes, ESPRESSO will offer new possibilities in many fields
of astronomy. Our main scientific objectives are, however, the search
and characterization of rocky exoplanets in the habitable zone of quiet,
near-by G to M-dwarfs, and the analysis of the variability of
fundamental physical constants. The project is, for most of its
workpackages, in the procurement or development phases, and the CCL
infrastructure is presently under adaptation work. In this paper, we
present the scientific objectives, the capabilities of ESPRESSO, the
technical solutions for the system and its subsystems. The project
aspects of this facility are also described, from the consortium and
partnership structure to the planning phases and milestones.