High resolution and high stability spectrographs at ESO

G. Lo Curto, ESO

The quest for high precision radial velocity measurements of solar type stars
has a long history, and the top ranking instrument in the field today is HARPS.
The instrument has not yet reached its ultimate level of precision, and we are
working to upgrade its performance with the goal of a precision in the range
of few tens of cm/s. We try to achieve this with an improved guiding and with
a novel wavelength calibration technique. Both techniques will be used also
by ESPRESSO, the high resolution and high stability spectrograph for the VLT.
ESPRESSO will be capable of reaching the precision of 10cm/s and will have
access to measure Earth size planets in the habitable zone of low mass stars.
I will briefly describe the status of our experiments with the laser frequency
comb that could be used for wavelength calibration with ESPRESSO and is
a must for the high resolution, high stability spectrograph at the E-ELT aiming
at a precision of 1cm/s.


Séminaires à l'OHP