Portuguese at the forefront of discovering new worlds

The Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences(IA), an FCT Unit, was part of the team that built ESPRESSO, a high-resolution spectrograph that aims to identify Earth-like exoplanets. This instrument of extraordinary precision, which took around ten years to plan and build, will be installed at the European Southern Observatory(ESO) in Chile, from where it will operate. The researchers expect the first data to be obtained from mid-2018.

The development and construction of ESPRESSO was the result of a consortium of academic and scientific institutions from Portugal, Italy, Switzerland and Spain, as well as members of ESO, with Portuguese participation led by IA (University of Porto and University of Lisbon).

ESPRESSO will be able to break down and analyze the light coming from stars and, with this information, measure the speed with which stars approach or move away from us. With its level of precision, capable of measuring a speed variation of less than one kilometer per hour, it will be possible to measure the movement induced in the star by the gravitational influence of a planet as small as Earth. It will also be possible to determine the planet's mass. It is also hoped that the data will make it possible, in certain cases, to identify chemical elements present in its atmosphere.

The IA-led team was responsible for developing and installing the optical system that collects the light captured by each of the four telescopes of the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and takes it to the site where this spectrograph will be installed. The Portuguese technological component of the project was developed in partnership between IA and the Laboratory of Optics, Lasers and Systems(LOLS), a technology transfer unit of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon(FCUL).

IA researchers will now take part in the scientific exploration of ESPRESSO, together with the consortium partners, with a total of 273 nights of observation. In addition to discovering exoplanets, the IA is responsible for defining priority targets in fundamental physics, since this instrument will make it possible to test, with unprecedented accuracy, the universality of the laws of physics in the Universe.

Find out more on the IAwebsite
Image credit: University of Geneva