The ESO/GRAVITY instrument: probing the Galactic Centre supermassive black-hole

Event type
Event date
Venue
GAP room
Speaker
Paulo Garcia (CENTRA and University of Porto)

Abstract: The ESO/GRAVITY is an adaptive optics and fringe tracker assisted K-band interferometric spectrograph. The instrument development started in the last decade and reached first fringes with the auxiliary telescopes in December 2015. The consortium is led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) and includes the participation of CENTRA (Multidisciplinary Centre for Astrophysics). GRAVITY will be offered be ESO in the next observing period P98 and its science verification is planned for June 2016. The observational space enabled by GRAVITY and on the typical science achievable by the instrument in the first periods of observation will be presented as well as the relativistic and gravitational effects to be probed in the vicinity of the Galactic Centre supermassive black-hole.

 

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This seminar is supported by Portuguese Funds through the CIDMA - Centre for Research and Development in Mathematics and Applications, and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology ("FCT" - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), within the project UID/MAT/04106/2013.