Scientific Seminars

The VLT Survey Telescope: a wide-field scientific opportunity

Massimo Capaccioli
INAF-Centro VST-Na, Universita' Federico II, Napoli

2006-10-06    11:00    Brera -

The VLT Survey Telescope (=VST) is a 2.6 m aperture, new-technology wide-field imager equipped with a 16kx16k optical camera matching a 1°x1° field (scale 1 px =0”2). It will operate from the ESO Observatory at Cerro Paranal, Chile. The VST project is a joint venture among ESO (responsible for coordination, civil work and on-site operations), the Capodimonte Observatory-OAC at Naples (telescope), and the European consortium Omegacam (camera). By MoU, in return for the procurement of the telescope OAC shall receive from ESO (running VST) an amount of guaranteed observing time (GTO) with VST of the order of 20% of the total. For the reduction, analysis, archiving, and scientific exploitation of the VST material from GTO and from Italian participation to ESO public surveys (such as KIDS and ATLAS), INAF has created an ad hoc center at Naples (VSTceN). The talk is about the characteristics of the instrument (telescope, optics, camera, civil works), the status of the project (hardware and software), the schedule of the activities up to the first light/operation, expected in the second half of 2007. The key point, though, is the illustration of the OAC GTO survey projects (spanning from the Solar System to cosmology, and including participations to ESO public surveys). So far these projects have been elaborated mostly by OAC people, but they are fully open to collaborations.