ESO: MATISSE Sees First Light on VLTI

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MATISSE Instrument Sees First Light on
ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer
ESO Organisation Release | VLTI | MATISSE | 2018 Mar 05

First Light for MATISSE -- Credit: ESO/MATISSE Consortium

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The new MATISSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has now successfully made its first observations at the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. MATISSE is the most powerful interferometric instrument in the world at mid-infrared wavelengths. It will use high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy to probe the regions around young stars where planets are forming as well as the regions around supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies. The first MATISSE observations used the VLTI’s Auxiliary Telescopes to examine some of the brightest stars in the night sky, including Sirius, Rigel and Betelgeuse, and showed that the instrument is working well.

MATISSE (Multi AperTure mid-Infrared SpectroScopic Experiment) observes infrared light — light between the visible and microwave wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, covering wavelengths from 3–13 micrometres (µm). It is a second-generation spectro-interferometer instrument for ESO’s Very Large Telescope that can take advantage of multiple telescopes and the wave nature of the light. In this way, it produces more detailed images of celestial objects than can be obtained with any existing or planned single telescope at these wavelengths. ...

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<<The Open Window, also known as Open Window, Collioure, is a painting by Henri Matisse. The work, an oil on canvas, was painted in 1905 and exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris the same year. It was bequeathed in 1998 by the estate of Mrs. John Hay Whitney to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.. It depicts the view out the window of his apartment in Collioure, on the Southern coast of France. We see sailboats on the water, as viewed from Matisse's hotel window overlooking the harbor. He returned frequently to the theme of the open window in Paris and especially during the years in Nice and Etretat, and in his final years, particularly during the late 1940s.

The Open Window is an example of the Fauvist style of painting that Matisse became famous for, and for which he was a leader, roughly between the years 1900–1909. Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early twentieth-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.>>