Optical-Infrared Instrumentation

NWO-FAPESP meeting

16 March 2015

Wilfried Boland

NOVA Executive Director

NOVA program

Netherlands Research School for Astronomy

– Federation of university institutes

Amsterdam, Groningen, Leiden, Nijmegen

– 350 fte scientific staff: ~55 fte faculty staff/tenure-track, ~70 fte

postdocs, ~150 fte AIOs, ~45 fte instrumentalists; NOVA funds ~20%

Research and instrumentation are interlinked

parts of the NOVA program

– Many discoveries are the result for new observing

capabilities; NOVA wants to be an active player at

the forefront in key areas

Overview Top astronomy = top talent + top instrumentation

– Opening new wavelength ranges

– Larger collecting area

– Enhanced instrument capabilities

– Upcoming non-electromagnetic ‘messengers’

NOVA program enabled university astronomers

in the Netherlands to

– become leaders in Op-IR and sub-mm instruments and be

among the first users of these instruments

– make an early start with LOFAR key programs

– do early technical R&D and feasibility studies to assure

that project plans are realistic

Coherent national program

National strategic plan sets priorities

– Long-range planning: 10-20 years

Access to observing capabilities is

secured via

– Space: ESA, SRON

– Radio domain: ASTRON

– Op-IR + sub-mm: ESO, NOVA; NWO

Funding for large programs (> 10 M€) now depends on successful proposal

to national Roadmap program

NOVA strategy on Instrumentation

Provide science instruments for world leading telescopes

Focus is on ESO (E-ELT, VLT, ALMA)

Contribute to those instruments that are essential for innovation of research themes in research networks

Be among first users of the instrument

Train young instrument scientists, systems engineers, and designers

NOVA astronomers must “invest” in instrumentation projects as Principal Investigator or Instrument Scientist– Translate research questions into technical requirements

– Fund raising; leading (NL part) project team; participation in international consortium

Contributions to largest facilities

Our instrumentation teams

Op-IR Group NOVA-ALMA team

Instrumentation overview 1999-2013

2000 2005 2010 2014

ALMA Band-9

ALMA Band-5

PUMA-2

VLTI-MIDI

VLT-SINFONI

VST-OmegaCAM

Lab Astrophysics

JWST-MIRI

X-Shooter

MUSE

Sphere-Zimpol

LOFAR-DCLA

AMUSE

Gaia-DPAC

VLTI-MATISSE

E-ELT

Origin funding instrumentation

2009-2013; total = 24.5 M€

PROJECT MONITORING

Twice per year by Instrument Steering Committee

– Written progress report in advance of meeting

– Oral presentation by PI’s of projects that have issues to

report

– ISC reports their findings to NOVA Board and Directorate

– Board takes final decisions

Extra mini-review if there are serious issues

Project contingency is held at Board level

Standard PDR, FDR and MRR practice of ESO/ESA

Informal coaching by NOVA Executive Director

Op-IR instrumentation group Core Competences

Opto-mechanical cryogenic systems engineering

Spectroscopy – Polarimetry – Interferometry

Cryogenic Precision Optics & Mechanisms

Improvement loop: Design – Manufacture – Test

JWST-MIRI Sphere-ZIMPOL MATISSE

Op-IR group – Track record For ESO VLT-VLTI

– 2003 MIDI – two-beam combiner for interferometer

– 2004 VISIR – mid-IR high resolution spectrometer

– 2004 SPIFFI – near IR camera

– 2009 X-Shooter – near-IR spectroscopic arm

– 2014 Sphere-Zimpol – polarimetric module

– 2016 MATISSE – LM + N band four beam combiner

For ESO – E-ELT

– 2009-2010: participation in Phase-A studies for four

instruments

For JWST

– 2009 MIRI – cold optical bench for mid-IR spectrometer

IRAS 16293-2422:CO J=6–5 traces the outflow

driven by source A1+A2 of this proto-triple,

which partially covers source B • confirmation of

glycoaldehyde near source A • warm H218O in

emission toward source A1, in absorption to B.

ALMA Band-9 first NL results

Oph IRS48: transitional protoplanetary disk

with mm-sized grains trapped in a pressure

maximum by companion; warm H2CO at same

location; warm CO points at a low gas mass.

H2CO

CO 6–5

H218O

glycoaldehyde

Jørgensen et al. 2012;

Kristensen et al. 2013;

Persson et al. 2013

van der Marel et al. 2013, 2014;

Bruderer et al. 2014

contours: mm dust

Publications

ALMA: 98 publ; 30% NL

Band-9: 11 publ; 55% NL

Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer• Integral field spectrometer for the VLT:

• (Instantaneous) band width: 480-930 nm

• 1’x1’ FoV, 0.2’’ pixels

• Resolving power 1770 – 3590 (blue-red)

• First light and commissioning Feb 2014

• Performance equals or exceeds specs

• Narrow-field mode and AO still to come

What is in it for NOVA?

1. ASSIST – technology to test deformable mirrors

2. NOVA in charge of data management invaluable

experience in handling and serving complex 3D data

255 nights of GTO for joint consortium program

1st year NOVA science focal points:

Deep fields with multi-wavelength coverage (incl. UDF):

detect gas around galaxies in emission, resolved galaxy

properties, census of line emitters, redshift survey Deep

fields centered on bright QSOs: find galaxies corresponding to absorbers gas flows around galaxies, detect

VLT/X-shooter (2009)The most powerful spectrograph in the world

300 – 2500 nm in one shot

R ~ 10,000

Consortium: DK, F, I, NL, ESO

L. Kaper (NL-PI), R. Navarro, P. Groot

• Since commissioning, most demanded (with FORS2) VLT instrument

• So far, 178 refereed publications, of which 33 with NL involvement (17 1st author)

• NL: near-infrared spectrograph arm (NOVA-OptIR), data-reduction software

• NL funding (3.6 M€): NOVA, NWO, UvA, RU, ASTRON 43 GTO nights

• Expertise used in new projects: WHT/WEAVE, E-ELT/MOSAIC, BlackGEM, …

LOFAR DCLA Four key-science projects

– Epoch reionization

– Surveys

– Transients

– Cosmic rays

2.1 M€ NOVA start-up funding +

~ 3 M€ NWO+NSS

! Mpc shock in a z=0.2 galaxy

cluster; thermal noise limited

map at 150 MHz

Transients pipeline 1.0:

discovery of 11 min transient of

unknown origin

Instrumentation program2014-2018

Focus on E-ELT instrumentation

– PI role in mid-IR imager/spectrometer METIS

– Partner role in 1st light instrument MICADO

– Feasibility study on MOS instrument MOSAIC

– Technology studies for EPICS, characterization exoplanets

One of three key players in WEAVE, multi-object

spectrometer for 4.2m WHT on La Palma; NOVA+NWO-EW

– Gaia spectroscopic follow-up

ALMA Band-5 (170-211 GHz) receiver: final design

and series production together with GARD (Sweden)

2014-2018 instrumentation, continuation

Hunter for optical afterglows of gravitational wave

events: BlackGEM

Technology development for Cerenkov Telescope

Array (CTA)

Participation in space missions

– Calibration tools for spectrometer in mid-IR instrument

(MIRI) on JWST; also integration/testing support

– Visualization of Gaia data; science support

– Participation in EUCLID Ground Support

ARTS, new transient capability on WSRT

Laboratory astrophysics

E-ELT Instrumentation

European Extremely Large

Telescope (E-ELT)

– 39 meter diameter - Optical-IR

– Construction approved in Dec 2014

– First light ~2025

NOVA is PI for 3rd instrument,

imager-spectrometer – METIS

– mid-infrared wavelengths

– on telescope in 2027

Technology

development for

METIS in

collaboration with

industry

Project structure

NL work packages are led by NL-PI based at a

university institute

NL-PI is Co-I in international consortium consisting of

4-6 partners (from different countries)

Most of instrumentation work is done at NOVA Op-IR

group; science related work and technical R&D at

universities

Participation of industry where possible

Progress is reviewed by NOVA Instrument Steering

Committee twice per year

ALMA related projects

ALMA receiver cartridges

– Band-9: 602-720 GHz

– Band-5: 161-211 GHz

Motivation: assure that ALMA will be equipped with

best receivers; in particular high-frequency receivers

from start

– Dedicated NOVA ALMA instrumentation at RUG in SRON

Groningen laboratory

– Use of SRON heritage developed for HIFI

– Band-9 work could not be done by industry for this price

(17.5 M€ ESO funding for design, prototyping and

production of 72 receiver cartridges + spares)

In red: dust in SN 1987A

BlackGEMOptical array for gravitational wave counterparts

Aim To detect and characterize the population of GW counterparts

Timeline 2016, 5-year project

Phase 1 4 telescopes (3 M€); Phase 2; 15 telescopes (10 M€)

Per telescope 2.7 square degrees, 0.56 ”/pix, 65cm aperture

Location ESO La Silla

GPO/

Marly

-NL

1. Establish NL role in CTA

2. Optimize CTA for NL science interest

E.g. galactic cosmic rays:

• H.E.S.S. image of supernova remnant (SNR) RX J1713

• SNRs sources of PeV particles in Milky Way?

Instrumentation: co-develop camera for 10 – 300 TeV sub-array of CTA

CHEC – collaboration of Australia, Japan,

Netherlands, UK, US to build a camera for

the small-size telescopes of CTA

Contribution:

• Precision time synchronization of all

individual telescopes (< 1ns

telescope to telescope

• Backend camera electronics

Goals of the NOVA CTA project

Other projects WEAVE – Multi-Object Spectrometer for WHT on La Palma

– ~ 15 M€ project; 4 M€ NL contribution of which 0.5 M€ NOVA

– PI Scott Trager

Long-term archiving + data-mining– 1-2 M€ NL investment of which 322 k€ from NOVA

– PI’s Gijs Verdoes Kleijn and Edwin Valentijn

– Science harvesting on OmegaCAM and MUSE GTO observations

ARTS: application on WSRT-Apertif– 2.8 M€ total, 670 k€ NOVA contribution

– PI: Yoeri van Leeuwen

– Radio transients, their likely origin: supernovae, neutron stars, black

holes; astrophysics under extreme density and/or gravity conditions

Laboratory Astrophysics PI: Harold Linnartz; NOVA 250 k€

polarimetric instrumentation development for direct exoplanet characterization

WHT/ExPo

spin-off: polarimetric instrumentation development for atmospheric aerosol measurements

VLT/SPHERE-ZIMPOL E-ELT/EPICS-EPOL

circumstellar disks exo-Jupiters rocky exoplanets

Summary Instrumentation and research are interlinked parts of

the our program

NOVA provides key (parts for) science instruments for

facilities provided by ESO, ALMA, LOFAR, ESA, ….

– In return NL astronomers get innovative data among the first

users --> exciting new science

– Instruments are delivered on time, on budget and within

specifications

We look forward to a flourishing NWO-FAPESP

collaboration in astronomy

– Technology development and instrumentation for ESO

telescopes and ALMA

– Providing an ALMA-type receiver for LLAMA