MATISSE (Multi-AperTure mid-Infrared SpectroScopic Experiment) is the mid-infrared instrument of the VLTI. It will produce the sharpest images of planet-forming regions in infant stellar systems, central regions of active galaxies, and close environment of massive stars.
MATISSE consists in an interferometer, combining four of the VLT telescopes, together with a spectrometer, working between 3 and 13 microns. It will produce images at an unprecedented resolution of a few thousandth of an arc-second.
The instrument was built by a consortium of 52 people across 6 countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Poland). It is currently being installed in Paranal, Chile, and is expected to be open to the scientific community in 2019.
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he MATISSE instrument, after having landed at Santiago, the 21st of October, is currently travelling by trucks to Cerro Paranal.
During the night of the 24th to 25th the trucks were near the city of Taltal. Most of the Panamerica road was completed up to the VLT site since only about 100 km remained.
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The MATISSE instrument did well arrived to Chile this Saturday and has passed the custom clearance of Santiago Yesterday. The instrument is now
officially inside Chile.
With a few day time-lag, here is a short video of the second truck loading in Europe, before the instrument was sent to the Amsterdam airport : https://youtu.be/533ZaaIuOP4 A similar travel by trucks between Santiago and Paranal is currently on going.
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A photographer from the Martinair compagny (KLM & Air france), which did transported the MATISSE instrument and did take-off from Amsterdam on Friday evening, October 20th, took this series of pictures.
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The second truck transporting the last ensemble of the 26 boxes - about a total of 12 Tonnes - in which the MATISSE subsystems are packed, has left Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur yesterday, Wednesday 11th. The truck will reach Nuerenberg where the freight from the first truck has been waiting since last week. The travel to Chili by cargo plane is planned for the 21st of October.
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In the following videos you can see the dismounting of the photometric sliders which tooks place after the disassembly of the two MATISSE detector. The disassembly of MATISSE and its packing started on the 14th of September. An accelerated video capture of the instrument disassembly is presented in the following video that Florentin has compiled and masterized.