2022/09/23 by A. Drescher, M Fabricius, Drescher, A. +71 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2209.11602
openalex publication_date 2022/09/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
As part of the GRAVITY+ project, the near-infrared beam combiner GRAVITY and the VLTI are currently undergoing a series of significant upgrades to further improve the performance and sky coverage. The instrumental changes will be transformational, and for instance uniquely position GRAVITY to observe the broad line region of hundreds of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) at a redshift of two and higher. The increased sky coverage is achieved by enlarging the maximum angular separation between the celestial science object (SC) and the off-axis fringe tracking (FT) star from currently 2 arcseconds (arcsec) up to unprecedented 30 arcsec, limited by the atmospheric conditions. This was successfully demonstrated at the VLTI for the first time.