MATISSE - the four telescope VLTI instrument for the L, M, and N band
Summary
MATISSE is a four-telescope beam combination instrument operating in the L (between 3.2 and 3.9 μm), M (between 4.5 and 5.0 μm), and N (between 8.0 and 13.0 μm) bands. It operates in a spectroimaging mode, providing low, medium, and high spectral resolutions. MATISSE's angular resolution is set by the maximum separation of the telescopes and the field of view of the instrument. In a nutshell, MATISSE is able to resolve features as small as 3 mas (milli-arcsecond) in the L-band and as small as 8 mas in the N-band with the ATs, respectively 5mas and 12.5 mas with the UTs.
The complete pre-requisites for MATISSE service mode observations and the up-to-date flux limits can be found on the instrument description page.
Publications based on data obtained with the MATISSE instrument should quote the following reference paper:
Publications based on data obatined using MATISSE in combination with the GRAVITY ffringer tracker (GRA4MAT mode) should also include the reference to:
Woillez J., Petrov, R., Abuter, R. et al., 2024, "GRAVITY for MATISSE. Improving the MATISSE performance with the GRAVITY fringe tracker”, A&A 688, A190.
Contact Information
- Questions related to proposal preparation, service mode, and visitor mode observations should be addressed via the contact form at ESO Operations Helpdesk.
- Please, send us your general feedback, comments, suggestions, or report errors and inaccurate statements in the web pages and manuals also via this contact form.
- For VLTI users needing assistance to prepare their VLTI proposals, the community supported VLTI Expertise Centres - distributed throughout Europe - can offer in-depth support. They also offer support for observation preparation, advanced data reduction and interpretation.
See also the Instrument Operation Team and the MATISSE Consortium web pages.
Content of these pages
The following items are available on all the MATISSE pages, using the bar on the left.
- Overview: a short description of the instrument
- News: list of changes affecting the instrument and/or its pages.
- Instrument Description: all the important parameters of the instrument (must read for proposal preparation).
- Manuals: links to all documents related to MATISSE.
- Tools: a collection of useful tools and informations for preparing and analyzing the MATISSE observations.
- Instrument Operation Team
- Visitor Instructions: Instrument specific instructions for Visiting Astronomers
- Consortium: A list of the MATISSE Consortium contributing Institutes.
- MATISSE Links: miscellaneous links about interferometry and MATISSE.
- Science: links to scientific publications made with MATISSE