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 designed to identify Earth-like exoplanets. This extraordinarily precise instrument, 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. 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 the ESO, with Portuguese participation led by the IA (University of Porto and University of Lisbon).

ESPRESSO will enable us to break down and analyze the light coming from stars and, with this information, measure the speed at which stars are approaching or moving 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 mass of the planet. It is also hoped that the data will, in certain cases, allow the identification of chemical elements present in its atmosphere.

The team led by IA was responsible for developing and installing the optical system that collects the light captured by each of the four telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and carries it to the location where this spectrograph will be installed. The Portuguese technological component of the project was developed in partnership between the 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 participate in the scientific exploration of ESPRESSO, together with consortium partners, with a total of 273 nights of observation available. In addition to the discovery of exoplanets, IA is responsible for defining priority targets in fundamental physics, as this instrument will allow the universality of the laws of physics in the Universe to be tested with unprecedented accuracy.

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