The atmospheric turbulence measurement is an essential information for high-angular resolution imaging in astronomy, and for optical link. Since 2015, the CATS station monitors atmospheric conditions at the Calern observatory, during both daytime and nighttime from the ground to the top of the atmosphere. The station is fully autonomous and is equipped with a set of instruments to continuously monitor optical turbulence. The Profiler of Moon Limb measures, from Sun or Moon limbs observation, the vertical profiles of the refractive index structure constant Cn2 with a high vertical resolution. The Generalized DIMM monitors the integrated turbulence parameters by observing bright stars. More recently, knowing the need of turbulence forecasting, we developed a system integrated in the CATS station to daily predict daytime and nighttime meteorological and optical turbulence conditions for the next 48h. We also have designed an instrumental platform attached to a drone and allowing to measure, with a high resolution, the weather conditions between the ground and an altitude of around 500m. Recently we have improved the station by adding instrument to better monitor the cloud conditions.
The first generation of ELT instruments includes an optical-infrared high resolution spectrograph, indicated as ELT-HIRES and recently christened ANDES (ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph). ANDES consists of three fibre-fed spectrographs ([U]BV, RIZ, YJH) providing a spectral resolution of ∼100,000 with a minimum simultaneous wavelength coverage of 0.4-1.8 μm with the goal of extending it to 0.35-2.4 μm with the addition of an U arm to the BV spectrograph and a separate K band spectrograph. It operates both in seeing- and diffraction-limited conditions and the fibre-feeding allows several, interchangeable observing modes including a single conjugated adaptive optics module and a small diffraction-limited integral field unit in the NIR. Modularity and fibre-feeding allows ANDES to be placed partly on the ELT Nasmyth platform and partly in the Coudé room. ANDES has a wide range of groundbreaking science cases spanning nearly all areas of research in astrophysics and even fundamental physics. Among the top science cases there are the detection of biosignatures from exoplanet atmospheres, finding the fingerprints of the first generation of stars, tests on the stability of Nature’s fundamental couplings, and the direct detection of the cosmic acceleration. The ANDES project is carried forward by a large international consortium, composed of 35 Institutes from 13 countries, forming a team of almost 300 scientists and engineers which include the majority of the scientific and technical expertise in the field that can be found in ESO member states.
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