VLTI Spectro Imager

Latest articles

• SPIE’2008 conference

  3 November 2008, by Fabien Malbet
  At the SPIE 2008 conference in Marseille, several VSI contributions were presented to the community. The VLTI Spectro-Imager by F. Malbet et al. (astro-ph/0807.1062) Science case for 1 milliarcsecond spectroimaging in the near-infrared by P. Garcia et al. System overview of the VLTI Spectro-Imager by L. Jocou et al. (astro-ph/0807.3403) The IR Spectrograph of VSI: dispersing the light from an Integrated Optics beam combiner by D. Lorenzetti et al. (astro-ph/0807.1617) Fringe tracker for (...)

• Welcome to the VSI website

  18 January 2008
  The VLTI spectro-imager (VSI) is an astronomical project to equip the VLT interferometer with a spectro-imager capable of resolving compact astrophysical sources at the milli-arcsecond scale.

• 1. General context

  18 January 2008
  At the beginning of the 21st century, infrared observations performed at the milli-arcsecond scale are essential for many astrophysical investigations either to compare the same physical phenomena at different wavelengths (like sources already observed with the VLBI or soon to be observed by ALMA) or to get finer details on observations carried out with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) or 10-m class telescopes equipped with adaptive optics. The astrophysical science cases at (...)

• 2. Instrument overview

  18 January 2008
  The VLTI Spectro Imager will provide the ESO community with spectrally-resolved near-infrared images at angular resolutions down to 1.1 milliarcsecond and spectral resolutions up to R=12000. Targets as faint as K=13 will be imaged without requiring a brighter nearby reference object; fainter targets can be accessed if a suitable off-axis reference is available. This unique combination of high-dynamic-range imaging at high angular resolution and high spectral resolution for a wide range of (...)

• 3. Science cases

  18 January 2008
  The high level specifications of the instrument are derived from science cases based on the capability to reconstruct for the milli-arcsecond-resolution images of a wide range of targets. These science cases are detailed below. Formation of stars and planets Disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars Image reconstruction performed with 6 ATs on a model disk around an Herbig Ae star. Left: model image; middle: coverage of the spatial frequencies; right: reconstructed image. The dust (...)

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