Speaker
Martin Roth
Description
The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is the current 1st priority flagship project of European ground-based Astronomy in the optical and NIR. After completion in 2024, the E-ELT will be the most advanced and most sensitive facility for diffraction limited imaging and spectroscopy with a giant aperture for the next decades to come. MOSAIC is a conceptual idea to exploit this sensitivity for multiobject spectroscopy (MOS), covering the full range of E-ELT science and including input from a broad cross-section of astronomers across the ESO partner countries. I will highlight cases relating to studies of high-redshift galaxies, galaxy evolution, and stellar populations. A general requirement is the need for two observational modes to best exploit the large (≥40 arcmin2) patrol field of the E-ELT. The first mode (‘high multiplex’) requires integrated-light (or coarsely resolved) optical/near-IR spectroscopy of >100 objects simultaneously. The second (‘high definition’), enabled by wide-field adaptive optics, requires spatially-resolved, near-IR of >10 objects/sub-fields.
