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One of the highlights of the European ELT Science Case book is the study of resolved stellar populations, potentially out to the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. A European ELT would enable such studies in a wide range of unexplored distant environments, in terms of both galaxy morphology and metallicity. As part of a small study, a revised science case...
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At present there are several efforts worldwide which aim to build the
next generation of large ground-based telescopes. These extremely large
telescopes (ELTs) will ensure the boundaries of astronomical exploration
continue to expand. While these future extremely large telescopes are
in themselves technically challenging, the greatest challenges may arise
from the complexity demanded by those instruments inspired by the
prospect of large apertures and high angular resolutions. In this
proceedings an overview of the proposed optical to near-infrared future
ELTs will be given along with a discussion of some of the proposed
instrumentation. Some of the difficulties faced by ELT instrumentation
builders and possible solutions will be explored.
In 2006 ESO Council authorized a Phase B study of a European AO-telescope with a 42 m segmented primary with a 5-mirror design, the E-ELT. Several reports and working groups have already presented science cases for an E-ELT, specifically exploiting the new capabilities of such a large telescope. One of the aims of the design has been to find a balance in the performances between an E-ELT and the James Webb Space Telescope, JWST. Apart from the larger photon-collecting area, the strengths of the former is the higher attainable spatial and spectral resolutions. The E-ELT AO system will have an optimal performance in the near-IR, which makes it specially advantageous. High-resolution spectroscopy in the near-infrared has, however, not been discussed much. This paper aims at filling that gap, by specifically discussing spectroscopy of stellar (mainly red giant), photospheric abundances. Based on studies in the literature of stellar abundances, at the needed medium to high spectral resolutions in the near-infrared (0.8-2.4 microns), I will try to extrapolate published results to the performance of the E-ELT and explore what could be done at the E-ELT in this field. A discussion on what instrument characteristics that would be needed for stellar abundance analyses in the near-IR will be given. Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomische Nachrichten, AN
The fields of view of Extremely Large Telescopes will contain vast numbers of spatial sampling elements (spaxels) as their
adaptive optics systems approach the diffraction limit over wide fields. Since this will exceed the detection capabilities
of any realistic instrument, the field must be dilutely sampled to extract spectroscopic data from selected regions of interest.
The scientific return will be maximized if the sampling pattern provides an adaptable combination of separated independent
spaxels and larger contiguous subfields, seamlessly combining integral-field and multiple-object spectroscopy. We illustrate
the utility of this diverse-field spectroscopy (DFS) to cosmological studies of galaxy assembly. We show how to implement
DFS with an instrument concept: the Celestial Selector. This integrates highly multiplexed monolithic fibre systems and switching
networks of the type currently available in the telecommunications industry. It avoids bulky moving parts, whose limitations
were noted in Paper I. In Paper III, we will investigate the optimization of such systems by varying the input–output mapping.
