Today's Colloquium: The Large Binocular Telescope - the telescope, its instrumentation and scientific perspective

© Jochen Heidt

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is a relatively young telescope. Having seen first light in 2005 it is certainly the most advanced optical/NIR 8m-class telescope at present. Its 1st generation instruments which are now close to completion offer a wide range of of observing modes, some of which are world-leading.

I will give a brief review on the development of the LBT project, present its current instrumentation and give an outline of its scientific perspective. Special emphasis will be given to the LUCI instruments, which are NIR imager and multi-object spectrographs for the LBT and which are developed at my home institution. Finally, some recently obtained LBT results focusing on potential supermassive binary black hole systems will be discussed.