What will the future bring? Scientific discoveries expected from the E-ELT

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1 What will the future bring? Scientific discoveries expected from the E-ELT Planets & Stars Stars & Galaxies Galaxies & Cosmology Eline Tolstoy Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen

2 E-ELT Instruments A beautiful complex telescope needs instruments to do science.

3 All E-ELT instruments need Adaptive Optics credit image: GMT (Giant Magellan Telescope). Adaptive Optics OFF Adaptive Optics ON

First Generation E-ELT Instruments: (approved) MICADO/MAORY

4microns Primarily a workhorse imager - a focus on astrometry -

France, Austria, Italy, ESO HARMONI optical/ir IFU spectrograph

Bernhard Brandl (Leiden/Delft) Unique instrument on an E-ELT -

4 First Generation E-ELT Instruments: (approved) MICADO/MAORY optical/ir MCAO imager & slit spectrograph microns Primarily a workhorse imager - a focus on astrometry - watching stars move in different environments Germany, Netherlands, France, Austria, Italy, ESO HARMONI optical/ir IFU spectrograph Workhorse low/intermediate resolution small field spectrograph UK, France, Spain, ESO microns METIS mid-ir imager & spectrograph 3-19microns PI: Bernhard Brandl (Leiden/Delft) Unique instrument on an E-ELT - working at mid-infrared wavelengths - seeing through dust in a range of environments. Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Austria, Switzerland, UK, ESO

The power of the E-ELT The E-ELT will excel in collecting power and angular resolution Angular resolution scales with D (5x better for E-ELT versus VLT) 16x better than HST Exposure time

5 The power of the E-ELT The E-ELT will excel in collecting power and angular resolution Angular resolution scales with D (5x better for E-ELT versus VLT) 16x better than HST Exposure time scales with D 4 (500x faster for E-ELT versus VLT) 70000x faster than HST E-ELT 39m E-ELT MICADO Virgo Ellip9cal HST/ACS IZw18 18Mpc HST/2.4m HST 2.4m 0.75arcsec 0.75arcsec both images in I filter

6 Stars & Galaxies & Cosmology What we can do today in the very nearby Universe, can be extended to greater distances and higher densities with an E-ELT - this broadens our view of the physical properties of stars and galaxies in a much wider range of environments

7 Cosmic History Big Bang time present

8 Resolved Stellar Systems spatial resolution - sensitivity - photometric accuracy astrometry HST/2.4m Simulation of Omega Centauri (5 kpc) credit: NASA, ESA & J. Anderson (STScI)

9 Colour-Magnitude Diagram Analysis Tolstoy 2011 Science, 333, 176 direct observations of galaxies Low mass stars < 1M

10 Galaxies & Black Holes What we can do today in the very nearby Universe, can be extended to greater distances and higher densities with an E-ELT - this broadens our view of the physical properties of black holes in a much wider range of environments

11 Galactic Centre S0-2

12 Galactic Centre Credit: ESO/S. Gillessen/MPE/Marc Schartmann/L. Calçada Testing General Relativity in strong gravitational fields Gillessen et al Nature

13 Planets & Stars It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to actually see Earth-like planets with existing telescopes, the spatial resolution and the flux sensitivity is too low. E-ELT will radically change this.

14 Exoplanets: Are we alone? How do planetary systems form? How common are systems like ours? What atmospheres do planets have? Are there other Earths? Can we detect signs of life?

15 Exoplanets: radial velocity ESO/3.6m HARPS Credit: ESO/H. Zodet Proxima Centauri 4 light years distance Credit: ESO/G. Anglada-Escudé

16 Exoplanets: transits from Bill Borucki's Jan 2010 AAS Presentation

17 direct observations of exo-planets Gemini Planet Imager

18 Confirmed exoplanets

19 transits

20 The habitable zone from Seager 2013 Science, 340, 577.

E-ELT/METIS: direct observations of exoplanets 2hrs integration The Kepler mission (using the transit method) has revealed that small planets with

21 E-ELT/METIS: direct observations of exoplanets 2hrs integration The Kepler mission (using the transit method) has revealed that small planets with radii < 4 R Earth are abundant. These small, warm planets should emit enough thermal radiation for METIS to detect them. Brandl et al SPIE proc.

22 Proxima b - artist s impression orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

European Southern Observatory ELT. The Extremely Large Telescope. The World s Biggest Eye on the Sky

European Southern Observatory ELT The Extremely Large The World s Biggest Eye on the Sky Building a Giant On a mountain in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, ESO, the European Southern Observatory,