HARMONI: the ELT's First-Light Near-infrared and Visible Integral Field Spectrograph

TL;DR

HARMONI is a versatile near-infrared and visible integral field spectrograph for the ELT, equipped with adaptive optics modes, high-contrast capabilities, and multiple configurations for diverse astronomical observations.

Contribution

This paper introduces HARMONI, the first-light integral field spectrograph for the ELT, featuring adaptive optics, high-contrast imaging, and multiple operational modes and configurations.

Findings

HARMONI offers near diffraction-limited imaging with high spectral resolution.

It includes advanced adaptive optics modes for various observational needs.

The instrument's design supports a wide range of scientific programs.

Abstract

The High Angular Resolution Monolithic Optical and Near-infrared Integral field spectrograph (HARMONI) is the visible and near-infrared (NIR), adaptive-optics-assisted, integral field spectrograph for ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). It will have both a single-conjugate adaptive optics (SCAO) mode (using a single bright natural guide star) and a laser tomographic adaptive optics (LTAO) mode (using multiple laser guide stars), providing near diffraction-limited hyper-spectral imaging with high performance and good sky coverage, respectively. A unique high-contrast adaptive optics (HCAO) capability has recently been added for exoplanet characterisation. A large detector complement of eight HAWAII-4RG arrays, four choices of spaxel scale, and 11 grating choices with resolving powers ranging from R~3000 to R~17000 make HARMONI a very versatile instrument that can cater to a wide range of observing programmes.