The Multi-Object Optical and Near-Infrared Spectrograph (MOONS), has officially passed the major milestone of Preliminary Design Review (PDR). MOONS will be able to deploy ~1000 fibres over a field of view of ~500 square arcminutes, the largest patrol field offered at VLT Nasmyth focus. Total wavelength coverage is 0.6тАУ1.8 ѕ®m in the medium resolution (4000тАУ6000) mode; higher (R~9000) resolution will be available for the Ca II triplet (~0.85 ѕ®m) region and one region at R~20000 in H-band.
MOONS passes Its Preliminary Design Review
Published: 05 Apr 2016
The MOONS consortium is led by the UK STFC Astronomy Technology Centre and includes: Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA), Portugal; GEPI, Observatoire de Paris; Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) with its centres in Florence, Bologna, Milan and Rome; AIUC, Centre for Astro-Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Cat†Ѓlica de Chile; Cavendish Laboratory and Institute of Astronomy, UK; ETH Z†®rich, Institute for Astronomy; Universit†й de Gen†иve, through its Astronomical Observatory; and ESO.
MOONS is due to begin operation in 2019.