‘Meet METIS’- a New NOVA mini-Documentary

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METIS is one of the four first-generation instruments for ESO’s (European Southern Observatory) Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) that will go to the telescope later this decade. METIS is built by a European consortium under the lead of the PI institute NOVA (Netherlands Research School for Astronomy) with twelve partners from Germany, the UK, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Taiwan and the USA. Besides the PI-role, NOVA supplies the common fore optics (being built at ASTRON), various coronagraph optics and leads the instrument Assembly, Integration and Test (AIT) at Leiden University.

With the System Final Design Review (FDR) held last November, manufacturing METIS has started and is well underway here at ASTRON and our new NOVA MAX facility in Dwingeloo.

To celebrate that vital project milestone, ESO– together with the METIS consortium – produced a mini-documentary. It was screened during a live event on ESO’s YouTube and Facebook channels on Friday, 12th May, where METIS team members Bernhard Brandl (NOVA), Jeff Lynn (NOVA) and Silvia Silvia Scheithauer (MPIA) answered questions about the project.

METIS, the Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph offers diffraction-limited imaging, low and medium-resolution slit spectroscopy and coronagraphy for high-contrast imaging at wavelengths between 3 and 13 microns and high-resolution integral field spectroscopy between 3 and 5 microns.

The high-tech features of METIS will enable scientists to go far beyond the capabilities of the best observatories today, including the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. For example, METIS will have a much higher resolution than JWST both spectrally and spatially, allowing us to peer into the details of star and planet formation and explore the extremely thin atmospheres of rocky exoplanets.

https://youtu.be/YG5gJqi7nwM