The MUSE second-generation VLT instrument

Understand

The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) is a second-generation VLT panoramic integral-field spectrograph currently in manufacturing, assembly and integration phase.

• MUSE has a field of 1x1 arcmin2 sampled at 0.2x0.2 arcsec2 and is assisted by the VLT ground layer adaptive optics ESO facility using four laser guide stars.
• The instrument is a large assembly of 24 identical high performance integral field units, each one composed of an advanced image slicer, a spectrograph and a 4kx4k detector.
• In this paper we review the progress of the manufacturing and report the performance achieved with the first integral field unit.