Carmenes ready to open its eyes

OBSERVATORY searching for earth-like planets

MONTH-BY-MONTH and week-by-week Calar Alto Observatory’s Carmenes project is coming closer to completion.

This month the wait was narrowed down to day-by-day and the observatory has now taken delivery of Carmenes’ last and most important component.  This is the spectrograph, the infrared ‘eye’ which, once it has been attached to the 3.5-metre telescope will search outer space for earth-like planets.

Carmenes – an acronym for “Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exoearths with Near-infrared and optical Echelle Spectrographs”  – is the only telescope of its kind in the world.