2025/12/18 by Óscar Carrión-González, Sylvestre Lacour, Carrión-González, Óscar +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.17026
openalex publication_date 2025/12/18 · openalex created_date 2025/12/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this white paper, we propose an upgrade to the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) consisting of the addition of a new 8m Unit Telescope (UT5). The primary goal of this upgrade is to optimise the VLTI for exoplanet detection by creating four additional baselines of approximately 200m oriented toward the north-west. The inclusion of this telescope would reduce the inner working angle and improve the achievable contrast of the VLTI, thereby enabling the detection of mature exoplanets in reflected light.