METIS: the thermal infrared instrument for the E-ELT

摘要

The ‘Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph’ (METIS) will be the third instrument on the European ExtremelyLarge Telescope (E-ELT). METIS will provide diffraction limited imaging in the atmospheric L/M and N-band from 3to 14 μm over an 18?×18? field of view, as well as high contrast coronagraphy, medium-resolution (R ≤ 5000) long slitspectroscopy, and polarimetry. In addition, an integral field spectrograph will provide a spectral resolution of R ~100,000 at L/M band. Focusing on highest angular resolution and high spectral resolution, METIS will deliver uniquescience, in particular in the areas of exo-planets, proto-planetary-disks and high-redshift galaxies, which are illustrated inthis paper. The reduction of the E-ELT aperture size had little impact on the METIS science case. With the recentpositive developments in the area of detectors, the METIS instrument concept has reached a high level of technologyreadiness. For some key components (cryogenic chopping mirror, immersed grating, sorption cooler and cryogenicderotator) a development and test program has been launched successfully.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.