ESO/MPE: First Light for Future Black Hole Probe

[bystander]

First Light for Future Black Hole Probe
Successful Commissioning of GRAVITY at the VLTI
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE)
ESO Organisation Release | 2016 Jan 13

[img3="GRAVITY discovers new double star in Orion Trapezium Cluster
Credit: ESO/GRAVITY consortium/NASA/ESA/M. McCaughrean"]http://cdn.eso.org/images/screen/eso1601a.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

Zooming in on black holes is the main mission for the newly installed instrument GRAVITY at ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. During its first observations, GRAVITY successfully combined starlight using all four Auxiliary Telescopes. The large team of European astronomers and engineers, led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, who designed and built GRAVITY, are thrilled with the performance. During these initial tests, the instrument has already achieved a number of notable firsts. This is the most powerful VLT Interferometer instrument yet installed.

The GRAVITY instrument combines the light from multiple telescopes to form a virtual telescope up to 200 metres across, using a technique called interferometry. This enables the astronomers to detect much finer detail in astronomical objects than is possible with a single telescope.

Since the summer of 2015, an international team of astronomers and engineers led by Frank Eisenhauer (MPE, Garching, Germany) has been installing the instrument in specially adapted tunnels under the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile [1]. This is the first stage of commissioning GRAVITY within the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). A crucial milestone has now been reached: for the first time, the instrument successfully combined starlight from the four VLT Auxiliary Telescopes [2]. ...

[saturno2]

I think this technique is new and important
for better study an astronomical object.
Several telescopes in parallel,
more visual field. Very interesting

[bystander]

Successful First Observations of Galactic Centre with GRAVITY
ESO | VLT | GRAVITY | 2016 June 23

Black hole probe now working with the four VLT Unit Telescopes

[img3="Image of the galactic centre. For the interferometric GRAVITY observations the star IRS 16C was used as a reference star, the actual target was the star S2. The position of the centre, which harbours the (invisible) black hole known as Sgr A*,with 4 million solar masses, is marked by the orange cross. Credit: ESO/MPE/S. Gillessen et al."]https://cdn.eso.org/images/screen/eso1622b.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

A European team of astronomers have used the new GRAVITY instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope to obtain exciting observations of the centre of the Milky Way by combining light from all four of the 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes for the first time. These results provide a taste of the groundbreaking science that GRAVITY will produce as it probes the extremely strong gravitational fields close to the central supermassive black hole and tests Einstein’s general relativity.

The GRAVITY instrument is now operating with the four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and even from early test results it is already clear that it will soon be producing world-class science.

GRAVITY is part of the VLT Interferometer. By combining light from the four telescopes it can achieve the same spatial resolution and precision in measuring positions as a telescope of up to 130 metres in diameter. The corresponding gains in resolving power and positional accuracy — a factor of 15 over the individual 8.2-metre VLT Unit Telescopes — will enable GRAVITY to make amazingly accurate measurements of astronomical objects.

One of GRAVITY’s primary goals is to make detailed observations of the surroundings of the 4 million solar mass black hole at the very centre of the Milky Way. Although the position and mass of the black hole have been known since 2002, by making precision measurements of the motions of stars orbiting it, GRAVITY will allow astronomers to probe the gravitational field around the black hole in unprecedented detail, providing a unique test of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. ...

The Ideal Black Hole Laboratory
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics | 2016 June 23