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MPIA Science Release 2011-11-25 |
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German version  |
Adaptive optics at Europe's flagship telescope looks back on a decade of successful observations
Ten years ago today, NACO became operational: the first adaptive optics system of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). Adaptive Optics allows astronomers to remove the stars' twinkling – disturbances due to the Earth's atmosphere –, allowing for extremely sharp images of celestial objects. NACO looks back on a decade of scientific results, including the first direct image of an exoplanet and insight into the surroundings of our home galaxy's central black hole.
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Figure 1: This near-infrared image of the active galaxy NGC 1097, obtained with NACO in 2005, discloses with unprecedented detail a complex network of filaments linking the outer regions with the galaxy's center. These observations provide astronomers with new insights on how super-massive black holes lurking inside galaxies get fed. Credit: ESO, A. Prieto (MPIA, IAC) [Larger version for download] |
| NACO Gallery | Contact | Background information | Image Gallery |
For non-astronomers, the twinkling of the stars can be quite romantic. For astronomers, it is the outward sign of a fundamental problem: As light passes through turbulent areas of the Earth's atmosphere, it is deflected in uneven and ever-changing ways. What should be a sharp image of, say, a star in a telescope instead becomes a diffuse disk as the star's image dances to and fro, or splits into several partial images. That is why, before adaptive optics, astronomers were forced to use space telescopes or else to wait for exceptionally good atmospheric conditions – which happen only a few times, if at all, in any given year – to obtain sharp images of celestial objects.
At least for images in the near-infrared, at slightly longer wavelengths that those of visible light, astronomers can also address the problem directly, using Adaptive Optics (AO): The ever-changing image is analyzed by a fast computer which, in real time, controls a deformable mirror. As the image dances and splits, the mirror twists warps and to compensate, restoring sharpness.
The NACO instrument was the first Adaptive Optics system at the VLT, the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy. Installed on one of the VLT's four 8,2 metre telescopes in 2001, it commenced scientific operations ("first light" in astronomical parlance) on November 25, 2001.
NACO was not the first AO instrument on an 8-10 metre class telescope, but it is arguably one of the most successful ones. With its help, the VLT immediately achieved a resolution surpassing that of the Hubble Space Telescope – at least at infrared wavelengths, where NACO operates. Scientific results from NACO run the gamut from solar system research to the most distant galaxies:
The instrument revealed the infrared glow of individual volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io, and obtained some of the first detailed surface and weather maps of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. It also excelled at detecting and examining planets outside the solar system (exoplanets): A faint speck of light called 2M1207b was the first planet-sized object ever imaged in orbit around an object other than the Sun (in this case, a so-called brown dwarf – an object that is not quite a star, but larger than a planet).
In another first, NACO performed the first spectral analysis of a directly imaged exoplanet in orbit around a nearby star. This allowed astronomers to probe the atmosphere of the exoplanet HR 8799c for the presence of methane and carbon monoxide.
NACO's uniquely sharp infrared view also pierced the dust veil hiding the centre of the Milky Way. By tracing the orbit of a star around the Galactic center, NACO provided the strongest evidence yet for the presence of a central black hole in the centre of our home galaxy, with the mass of several million Suns.
When it came to young star clusters like the Arches cluster or RCW 38, NACO proved its worth by imaging separately hundreds of densely packed stars in the clusters' central regions. This provided astronomers with data to study the early phases of stellar evolution over the entire range of stellar masses, from stars with less than tenths of the mass of our Sun to stars with more than 100 solar masses.
NACO is a first generation VLT instrument, developed in a joint effort between French and German research institutes and ESO. Thanks to continuous upgrades over the past decade, it remains one of the preeminent Adaptive Optics instruments worldwide, enabling European astronomers to stay at the forefront of astronomical research. Several additional Adaptive Optics instruments have entered service at the VLT over the past decade. A number of new instruments are currently under development, and Adaptive Optics will be an integral part of the next generation of telescopes, including the 40 metre class European Extremely Large Telescope.
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NACO Gallery
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Portrait of an instrument. NAOS-CONICA installed at the 8.2 m telescope Yepun, which is part of the VLT. The dark blue ring on the left is the telescope adapter; the adaptive optics system NAOS is the adjacent light-blue part, and the camera CONICA is contained in the red cryostat. The white cabinet contains electronics used to control the instrument. More information: press release eso0137 [Larger version for download] |
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As sharp as Hubble. The "first light" NACO image (right) compared with an image by the Hubble Space Telescope (left). Both images show an outer region of the young star cluster NGC 3603. NACO's infrared view penetrates the obscuring dust, and reveals many more stars than Hubble in the optical, yet at comparable resolution. This shows how Adaptive Optics can compensate for the disadvantage of having to observe through the Earth's atmosphere. More information: press release eso0137 [Larger version for download] |
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The first exoplanet image. Given that stars are so much brighter than planets, it is exceedingly difficult to directly image a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. This NACO image from 2004 was a key step towards that goal. It shows not a Sun-like star, but the "brown dwarf" 2M1207 (an object with slightly too little mass to become a star) and its companion, which was later confirmed to be the first image of a planetary mass object in orbit around an astronomical object other than the Sun. More information: Press release eso0428 [Larger version for download] |
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Fingerprinting an exoplanet. In 2010, NACO obtained the first direct spectrum of an exoplanet. The composite shown here artistically combines the image of the tripel planetary system (left) and the spectrum taken by splitting its light into different wavelengths (right). The spectrum shows that the atmosphere of the giant planet orbiting the bright young star HR 8799 contains methane and carbon monoxide. In the distant future, similar measurements might detect traces of life on another planet. More information: Press releases MPIA 2010-01-13 and eso1002 [Larger version for download] |
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Weighing our central black hole. When NACO became operational, the central region of our galaxy near the position of the radio source "Sgr A*", thought to be the location the Milky Way's central black hole, had been under observation for almost ten years. But what NACO had to contribute turned out to be a surprise: Its highly detailed images showed the star designated as S2 passing the location of Sgr A* at a distance of a mere 17 light-hours – only three times the distance between Pluto and the Sun. This meant a sudden downward revision of the maximum size Sgr A* can have, providing strong evidence that it is indeed a black hole, and allowed for a fairly accurate estimate of the black hole mass. More information: Press releases eso0226 and eso0818 [Larger version for download] |
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Mapping Saturn's moon, Titan. NACO obtained these six views of Saturn's moon, Titan, on six nights in February 2004. Before the Cassini-Huygens mission reached Saturn later that year, the map of Titan's surface reconstructed from these images was the most detailed such map available to planetary scientists. [Larger version for download] |
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Contact information
Rainer Lenzen (principal investigator, CONICA)
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg
Phone: (+49|0) 6221 – 528 228
Email: lenzen@mpia.de
Wolfgang Brandner
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg
Phone: (+49|0) 6221 – 528 289
Email: brandner@mpia.de
Markus Pössel (public relations)
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg
Phone: (+49|0) 6221 – 528 261
Email: pr@mpia.de
Background information
NACO is a first generation VLT instrument, developed in a joint effort between French and German research institutes and ESO. NACO is short for NAOS-CONICA, which acronyms in turn stand for the instrument's two sub-systems:
The Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System (NAOS) has been developed, with the support of Institut National des Sciences de lUnivers/Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (INSU/CNRS) by a French Consortium in collaboration with ESO. The French consortium consists of Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aèrospatiales (ONERA), Institut de Planetologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG, formerly called Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Grenoble) and Observatoire de Paris: Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique (LESIA, formerly called DESPA) and DASGAL (which does not exist anymore). The Project Manager is Gérard Rousset (ONERA), the Instrument Scientist responsible is François Lacombe (Observatoire de Paris) and the Project Scientist is Anne-Marie Lagrange (Institut de Planetologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, OSUG, Université Joseph Fourier/CNRS).
The CONICA Near-Infrared CAmera has been developed by a German Consortium, with an extensive ESO collaboration. The Consortium consists of Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (MPIA) (Heidelberg) and the Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE) (Garching). The Principal Investigator (PI) is Rainer Lenzen (MPIA), with Reiner Hofmann (MPE) as Co-Investigator.
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Images for download
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| NACO installed at the VLT. Credit: ESO |
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| Image of an outer region of the NGC 3603 star cluster, taken with the WFPC2 instrument aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (I-Band, exposure time 400 s). Credit: HST, NASA/ESA |
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| Image of an outer region of the NGC 3603 star cluster, taken with NAOS-CONICA (K band, exposure time 300 s). Credit: ESO/W. Brandner (MPIA) |
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| The brown dwarf 2M1207 and its planetary-mass companion. Credit: ESO/Gael Chauvin (IPAG/MPIA) |
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| Montage of an image and spectrum of the triple planetary system around HR 8799, taken with NACO. Credit: Markus Janson (Univ. of Toronto, MPIA)/Wolfgang Brandner (MPIA)/ESO |
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| Infrared NACO image with a side length of 2 arcseconds. The position of Sgr A* is marked by a cross; in May 2002, the star designated "S2" came within 0.015 arcsec (17 light hours) of the radio source. Credit: ESO/Reinhard Genzel (MPE) |
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| Six views of Titan. The image from the first night (Feburary 1-2, 2004, right) has been enlarged for clarity and the coordinate grid on Titan is indicated. These are false-color images rendering the 3 SDI wavebands as red (1.575 µm; surface), green (1.600 µm; surface) and blue (1.625 µm; atmosphere). Credit: Markus Hartung (ESO & Gemini Obs.), Rainer Lenzen (MPIA) |
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