Soon… 🤩 #ExoELT

Happy to share my insights on the potential of Doppler imaging with the ELT at #ExoELT last week! Also my first time at #ESO Garching!

Oohhh... dusty, crispy disks
#ExoELT #astrodon

But what about the ELT instruments themselves I hear you ask, how big are they? Well, dear reader, they are giraffe-sized and weigh four elephants #ExoELT 👀🦒🐘

It’s #ExoELT week! A week dedicated to discussing all things exoplanets and the ELT, @eso.org’s 39-m telescope coming online in 2029 😱 The size of this machine is just extraordinary. You can fit a whole VLT telescope on its Nasmyth platform 🤯

SI units for #ExoELT instruments are mass and height in Chilean Elephants (ChEl) and German Giraffes (GeGi), respectively.

I will not be taking questions at this time.

M. Nowak discussing synergies with VLT Interferometer (VLTI) and #ELT at #ExoELT - ELT has the >30m aperture for sensitivity, but VLTI combines all 4 VLT telescopes over a 200m baseline for better angular resolution, complementing sensitivity of ELT #astrodon #astrosci

Many #exoplanet astronomers are at #ESO headquarters near Munich to talk about #exoplanets with the Extremely Large Telescope #ELTref="/hashtag/ELT" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link">#ELT this week - first light in 2029/2030 - you can put one of the 8.4m VLT telescopes on the instrument platform of the #ELT… gulp! ☄️ #astrodon Follow along on #ExoELT

Even the mirror mount takes us to another level of large, these photos highlight the mount and the individual spots for the 798 mirror segments that are placed with just 2mm (!) between them, and each one is human-sized 😮 #ExoELT

At #ExoELT on Monday we had summaries of the #ELT instruments: METIS (Mid-IR imager and specrograph), MICADO (wide field imager), HARMONI (Near-IR IFU) and 2nd gen ANDES (R~100k spectrograph) - the hardware is suitably enormous - cryogenic dewars typically bigger than a hotel room! #astrodon

Ahhh now we're going to get to the funky instrument stuff... starting with the new ExAO suite SAXO+
#ExoELT

Representing the #SCExAO collab at #ExoELT

1. Elsa Huby on Photonic Lanterns
2. Stephanie Rossini-Bryson on GLINT the Nulling Interferometer

Kick-starting a week long discussion on ELT science and instrumentation for planets and their formation at #ExoELT
If you're around and would love to chat about disk imaging and AO instrumentation, you know where to find me :)

Adding to the ELT discussion, here's me next to ELT (Oct 2025) to give an idea of the size (I'm 5 ft 2 in tall). I was completely blown away by the sheer largeness of this facility, and can only imagine the amazing science it will be capable of.
#ExoELT

Gave a talk at #ExoELT on this massive disk colloquially known as Dracula's Chivito and what more we know from Subaru and HST IR data. Had some great feedback and discussion on trying to understand what makes this disk soo "chonky"
And giving a talk at @eso.org is a dream come true!

Easily my favorite cover slide so far. By Andrew Winter
#ExoELT

Pretty impressive given how JWST design is technically older than a lot of ground based instruments... and given how our whole deal as exoplanet nerds is to get closer to Earth like planets in solar system like config by improving high contrast imaging and hi res spectroscopy.
#ExoELT #astrodon