The European Extremely Large Telescope

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 18th October 2018 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: swmcmeet

Professor Vik Dhillon, University of Sheffield (and member of

the UK E-ELT Steering Committee)

With a primary mirror of diameter 39m, the European
Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be the world's largest
telescope operating in the visible to infrared wavelength range. The
E-ELT will collect 13 times more light than the largest telescopes
today and the telescope's adaptive optics will deliver images 16 times
sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. The sensitivity and spatial
resolution provided by the E-ELT will revolutionise our understanding
of the Universe, addressing numerous scientific questions from the
nature of extra-solar planets to detecting objects in the early
Universe. The E-ELT is already under construction, with first light
planned in 2024. The UK is playing a major role in the construction of
the E-ELT by providing instrumentation for the telescope. In this
talk, I shall describe the design of the telescope and some of the
science that will be performed with it.

Speaker: Prof. Vik Dhillon

Professor Vikram Dhillon

I am a Professor of Astrophysics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, and an Affiliated Researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) on Tenerife. Prior to moving to Sheffield in 1998, I worked at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, first at Herstmonceux/Sussex, then on La Palma, and finally in Cambridge. I was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Jackson-Gwilt Medal in 2013. Since 2014, I have been an ERC Advanced Grant holder. 

My primary research interests are in the field of close binary stars, in which at least one stellar component is a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole. This work has led me and my collaborators to develop a series of high-speed cameras, ULTRACAM, ULTRASPEC and HiPERCAM, as well as a robotic telescope on La Palma, pt5m. I am also interested in observing gravitational-wave sources in the Universe discovered by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, most likely emitted by close binary stars. My effort in this area is currently focused on the construction of GOTO, a wide-field survey telescope on La Palma that will search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave transients.

Learn more about Prof. Vik Dhillon

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