The promise of recent and future observatories and instruments

TL;DR

Future large telescopes and their advanced instruments hold significant potential to unravel the longstanding mystery of diffuse interstellar bands by enabling detailed observations across various cosmic environments.

Contribution

This paper reviews upcoming observatories and instruments, emphasizing their potential to advance understanding of DIB carriers in the next decade.

Findings

Progress in measuring DIBs with large telescopes

Future observatories will enable detailed DIB studies in diverse environments

Potential to identify DIB carriers with new instrumentation

Abstract

The identification of the carrier(s) of diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) is one of the oldest mysteries in stellar spectroscopy. With the advent of 8-10m-class telescopes substantial progress has been made in measuring the properties of DIBs in the optical and near-infrared wavelength domain, not only in the Galaxy, but also in different environments encountered in Local Group galaxies and beyond. Still, the DIB carriers have remained unidentified. The coming decade will witness the development of extremely large telescopes (GMT, TMT and E-ELT) and their instrumentation. In this overview I will highlight the current instrumentation plan of these future observatories, emphasizing their potential role in solving the enigma of the DIBs.