VISTA Camera takes to the air
The world’s biggest infrared camera for Europe’s newest telescope left the UK today (17th January 2007) for its flight to Santiago in Chile. The infrared camera will sit at the focal point of VISTA — a UK provided survey telescope being constructed in Chile for ESO, the Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere. VISTA will be able to map the infrared sky faster than any previous telescope, studying areas of the Universe that are hard to see in the optical region of the spectrum due to either (or all of) their cool temperature, surrounding dust or their high redshift.
The 2.9 tonne VISTA camera has been designed and built by a consortium including CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) in Edinburgh and the University of Durham. Mr Kim Ward, the Camera Manager, oversaw the technical challenges “The inside of the camera is under vacuum and it operates at a temperature of -200 degrees, so in many ways it has been like designing an instrument for use in space, but with the additional constraint of having to survive an earthquake environment. VISTA has a much larger number of infrared sensitive detectors than previous infrared instruments — totalling 67 million pixels, and its wide field of view requires it to have the largest ever window of any infrared camera.”
Only one airline offers regular cargo flights to Chile, so the camera will be loaded into a container and taken by ferry to mainland Europe, so that it can catch its Boeing 747 flight from Luxemburg on the 22nd January. The container is so large that it will only just fit in this massive plane. Once it touches down in Santiago, the container will be driven 1300 km to the mountain top where VISTA is being assembled at ESO’s Cerro Paranal Observatory.
VISTA is due to start scientific operations in the last quarter of 2007. Professor Jim Emerson of Queen Mary, University London is VISTA’s Principal Investigator: “VISTA will be able to take good quality images of areas of sky each about 3 times as great as the full moon. This means it can survey quickly which is its niche. The camera is crucial to carrying out VISTA’s surveys which will provide statistical samples of objects and at the same time locate and characterise rare and variable objects, and perhaps most tantalisingly make discoveries of the as-yet unknown.”
VISTA will survey large areas of the southern sky at near infrared wavelengths (2 to 4 times the wavelength of visible light) to study objects that are not seen easily in optical light either because they are too cool to (such as brown dwarfs), or are surrounded by interstellar dust which infrared light penetrates much better than optical, or whose optical light is redshifted into the near infrared by the expansion of the Universe. Amongst other things VISTA’s surveys will help our understanding of the nature and distribution and origin of known types of stars and galaxies, map the 3-D structure of our galaxy, and help determine the relation between the 3-D structure of the universe and the mysterious ‘dark energy’ and dark matter’. Samples of objects will be followed up in detail with further observations by other telescopes and instruments such as the nearby Very Large Telescope (VLT).
Professor Richard Wade, Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council Director and President of ESO Council said “The unique Paranal site, the large 4-m telescope aperture, the wide field, and the high efficiency of the detectors will make VISTA the world’s outstanding ground based near-IR survey instrument.”
Catherine Cesarsky, ESO’s Director General commented “VISTA is an eagerly awaited addition to ESO’s suite of telescopes. Wide area surveys such as those which VISTA will undertake can drive discoveries across the field of astronomy.”
VISTA is a BP36 million project, funded by grants from the DTI’s Joint Infrastructure Fund and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) to Queen Mary, University of London, the lead institute of the VISTA Consortium. VISTA forms part of the UK’s subscription to ESO and will be an ESO telescope. VISTA is project managed by PPARC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre.
Notes for Editors
Images
Images of the VISTA telescope, enclosure and infrared camera are available at http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/Vista_images.asp
Images of the camera being transported can be downloaded from http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/vista_camera.asp Contacts
Julia Maddock
PPARC Press Officer
Tel: 01793 442 094
Julia.maddock@pparc.ac.uk
Kim Ward
VISTA Camera Manager
Tel: 01235 445237
Email: k.ward@rl.ac.uk
Natalie Bealing MCIPR
Press and PR Manager
CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Tel: 01235 445484
Email: n.d.bealing@cclrc.ac.uk
Jim Emerson
VISTA Principal Investigator
Astronomy Unit, Queen Mary University of London
Tel: 01794 127 1548
j.p.emerson@qmul.ac.uk
Dr. Henri Boffin
ESO Press Officer
Tel: +49 89 3200 6222
hboffin@eso.org
Sian Halkyard
QMUL Press Officer
Queen Mary University of London
Tel: 0207 882 7454
s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk
Eleanor Gilchrist
Public Relations Officer
UK Astronomy Technology Centre
Tel: 0131 668 8397
efg@roe.ac.uk
VISTA http://www.vista.ac.uk
VISTA Consortium: The VISTA Consortium Lead Institute is Queen Mary University of London. The 18 UK University members of the VISTA Consortium are: Queen Mary, University of London, Queen’s University of Belfast, The University of Birmingham, University of Cambridge, Cardiff University, University of Central Lancashire, University of Durham, The University of Edinburgh, University of Hertfordshire, Keele University, Leicester University, Liverpool John Moores University, University of Nottingham, University of Oxford, University of St Andrews, University of Southampton, University of Sussex, University College London.
CCLRC http://www.cclrc.ac.uk
The Council for the Central Laboratory for the Research Council is one of eight UK research councils and is one of Europe’s largest multidisciplinary research organisation supporting scientists and engineers across the world. It operates world-class large scale research facilities, provides strategic advice to the government on their development and manages international research projects in support of a broad cross-section of the UK research community.
UKATC http://www.roe.ac.uk/ukatc
The UK Astronomy Technology Centre is located at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (ROE). It is a scientific site belonging to PPARC. The mission of the UK ATC is to support the mission and strategic aims of PPARC and to help keep the UK at the forefront of world astronomy by providing a UK focus for the design, production and promotion of state of the art astronomical technology.
QMUL http://www.qmul.ac.uk
Queen Mary, University of London
Queen Mary is one of the leading colleges in the federal University of London, with over 11,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and an academic and support staff of around 2,600. Queen Mary is a research university, with over 80 per cent of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001). It has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries. The College has 21 academic departments and institutes organised into three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry. It has an annual turnover of BP200 million, research income worth BP43 million, and it generates employment and output worth nearly BP400 million to the UK economy each year. Queen Mary’s roots lie in four historic colleges: Queen Mary College, Westfield College, St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and the London Hospital Medical College.
PPARC
The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) is the UK’s strategic science investment agency. It funds research, education and public understanding in four broad areas of science – particle physics, astronomy, cosmology and space science.
PPARC is government funded and provides research grants and studentships to scientists in British universities, gives researchers access to world-class facilities and funds the UK membership of international bodies such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory. It also contributes money for the UK telescopes overseas on La Palma, Hawaii, Australia and in Chile, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh and the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility.
