The first purpose of ESPRESSO is to develop a competitive, innovative high-resolution spectrograph to fully exploit the potentiality of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory and to allow new science. It is thus important to develop the VLT array concept bearing in mind the need to obtain the highest stability, while

The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a European collaborative project to build a 4m class solar telescope in the Canary Islands, which is now in its design study phase. The telescope will provide diffraction limited performance for several instruments observing simultaneously at the Coudé focus at different wavelengths. In order to guarantee the

The constituents of the cosmic IR background (CIB) are studied at its peak wavelengths (100 and 160 μm) by exploiting Herschel/PACS observations of the GOODS-N, Lockman Hole, and COSMOS fields in the PACS evolutionary probe (PEP) guaranteed-time survey. The GOODS-N data reach 3σ depths of ~3.0 mJy at 100 μm and ~5.7 mJy at 160 μm. At these levels

We present the science, design and performances of DIORAMAS, an imager and multi-slit spectrograph for the European Extremely Large Telescope. It covers a wide 6.8x6.8 arcmin2 field, a large wavelength range 0.37 to 1.6 microns. The exceptional performances of this concept will enable extremely deep images to magnitudes AB~30 and high multiplex

European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) based in 984 primary mirror segments achieving required optical performance; they must position relatively to adjacent segments with relative nanometer accuracy. CESA designed M1 Position Actuators (PACT) to comply with demanding performance requirements of EELT. Three PACT are located under each segment

Wide-field multi-object spectroscopy is a high priority for European astronomy over the next decade. Most 8-10m telescopes have a small field of view, making 4-m class telescopes a particularly attractive option for wide-field instruments. We present a science case and design drivers for a wide-field multi-object spectrograph (MOS) with integral