A team of astronomers using the ESO instrument GRAVITY has taken the first image of an exoplanet that had previously only been detected indirectly via the spectrum of its star. The result is the first set of measurements that allows astronomers to both determine an exoplanet’s intrinsic brightness and estimate its mass. For the planet, beta…
Detailed observations of the quasar 3C 273 with the GRAVITY instrument have revealled the structure of rapidly moving gas around the central super-massive black hole. Studying these black holes and determining their masses is an essential ingredient to understanding galaxy evolution in general.
The wavefront sensor of GRAVITY will be of Shack-Hartmann-type using a lenslet mask with 9x9 micro-lenses. It will be sensitive in the spectral range between 1.4 and 2.4 microns.
GRAVITY is an adaptive optics assisted Beam Combiner for the second generation VLTI instrumentation. The instrument will provide high-precision narrow-angle astrometry and phase-referenced interferometric imaging in the astronomical K-band for faint objects.
The combination of four 8-m-class Telescopes using the GRAVITY interferometric beam combiner together with a robust and innovative near-infrared adaptive optics system, opens exciting observing conditions in the following astro-physical fields.
GRAVITY is a 2nd generation near-infrared VLTI instrument that combines the light of the four unit or four auxiliary telescopes of the ESO Paranal observatory in Chile.