X-shooter, the new wide band intermediate resolution spectrograph at the ESO Very Large Telescope

By J. Vernet, H. Dekker, S. D’odorico, L. Kaper, P. Kjaergaard, F. Hammer, S. Randich, F. Zerbi, Paul J. Groot, J. Hjorth and 80 more. 2011

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X-shooter is the first 2nd generation instrument of the ESO Very Large Telescope(VLT). It is a very efficient, single-target, intermediate-resolution spectrograph that was installed at the Cassegrain focus of UT2 in 2009. The instrument covers, in a single exposure, the spectral range from 300 to 2500 nm. It is designed to maximize the sensitivity in this spectral range through dichroic splitting in three arms with optimized optics, coatings, dispersive elements and detectors. It operates at intermediate spectral resolution (R~4,000 - 17,000, depending on wavelength and slit width) with fixed echelle spectral format (prism cross-dispersers) in the three arms. It includes a 1.8"x4" Integral Field Unit as an alternative to the 11" long slits. A dedicated data reduction package delivers fully calibrated two-dimensional and extracted spectra over the full wavelength range. We describe the main characteristics of the instrument and present its performance as measured during commissioning, science verification and the first months of science operations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0ac2036090a191cb2daacadaf1a89a104da7e250

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Citations in the corpus

H0LiCOW – I. H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's wellspring: program overview (2016, background): “Only one-sixth of the HE1104−1805 observations with X-shooter (Vernet et al. 2011) were obtained, which were insufficient for measuring the lens velocity dispersion.”
An advanced scattered moonlight model for Cerro Paranal (2013, methodology): “In a subsequent paper, we will discuss the extension of this model into the near-IR using X-Shooter data (Vernet et al. 2011).”
EVIDENCE FOR PopIII-LIKE STELLAR POPULATIONS IN THE MOST LUMINOUS Lyα EMITTERS AT THE EPOCH OF REIONIZATION: SPECTROSCOPIC CONFIRMATION (2015, background): “X-SHOOTER/VLT observations Our X-SHOOTER/VLT (Vernet et al. 2011) observations targeted ‘CR7’ and were obtained on 22 January 2015 and 15 February 2015.”
A Multimessenger Picture of the Flaring Blazar TXS 0506+056: Implications for High-energy Neutrino Emission and Cosmic-Ray Acceleration (2018, methodology): “Medium-resolution spectroscopy of TXS0506+056 was obtained with the X-shooter spectrograph (Vernet et al. 2011) mounted on the Very Large Telescope UT2 at ESO Paranal Observatory on 2017 October1.”
Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A (2018, background): “Attempts were made using optical spectra from the Liverpool, Subaru, and VLT telescopes to measure the redshift of TXS 0506+056, but only limits could be derived [see, e.g., (47)].”
STELLAR KINEMATICS OF z ∼ 2 GALAXIES AND THE INSIDE-OUT GROWTH OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES, (2012, methodology): “Spectroscopic Observations Observations were performed with X-Shooter on the VLT UT2 (D’Odorico et al. 2006; Vernet et al. 2011).”
X-Shooter study of accretion in Chamaeleon I (2015, methodology): “The second-generation VLT instrument X-Shooter allows us to obtain simultaneous spectra of the whole wavelength range from ∼300 nm to ∼2500 nm at medium resolution and to thus derive Lacc directly from the UV-excess and stellar properties from the photospheric features of the spectra.”
GRB hosts through cosmic time - VLT/X-Shooter emission-line spectroscopy of 96 γ-ray-burst-selected galaxies at 0.1 (2015, methodology): “To assemble our target list, we rely heavily on previous catalogs, in particular TOUGH, BAT6 (Salvaterra et al. 2012), from GROND (Greiner et al. 2011; Krühler et al. 2011), and Article number, page 2 of 33 T. Krühler et al.: VLT/X-Shooter spectroscopy of GRB hosts SHOALS for which we retrieve X-Sho”
Discovery of extreme [O III] λ5007 Å outflows in high-redshift red quasars (2015, methodology): “…rAB − W4Vega > 14 mag and with REW of C IV λ1549 Å in excess of 100 Å for observations (PI: I. Pâris) with the European Southern Observatory’s VLT using XSHOOTER, a medium resolution spectrograph allowing simultaneous observations over the wavelength range from 0.3 to 2.48 µm (Vernet et al. 2011).”
Ultraviolet emission lines in young low-mass galaxies at z ≃ 2: physical properties and implications for studies at z > 7 (2014, methodology): “An additional galaxy in our sample (860359) was observed for 1 hr with c© 2013 RAS, MNRAS000, 1–22 the XSHOOTER spectrograph (Vernet et al. 2011) on the VLT as part of ESO program 085.”
Physical Properties of 15 Quasars at z ≳ 6.5 (2017, methodology): “These observations have been obtained with a variety of telescopes and spectrographs: VLT/FORS2, P200/DBSP, MMT/Red Channel, Magellan/FIRE, VLT/X-Shooter (Vernet et al. 2011), Keck/LRIS (Oke et al. 1995 and Rockosi et al. 2010) and GNT/GNIRS (Dubbeldam et al. 2000).”
ALMA REDSHIFTS OF MILLIMETER-SELECTED GALAXIES FROM THE SPT SURVEY: THE REDSHIFT DISTRIBUTION OF DUSTY STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “…(a wide-band, low resolution spectrometer operating between 190-310GHz, see Bradford et al. 2004) on the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope and XSHOOTER (Vernet et al. 2011) or the the FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph (FORS2; Appenzeller et al. 1998) on the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT).”
GRAVITATIONAL LENS MODELS BASED ON SUBMILLIMETER ARRAY IMAGING OF HERSCHEL-SELECTED STRONGLY LENSED SUB-MILLIMETER GALAXIES AT z > 1.5 (2013, methodology): “…Spectroscopy The optical and near-IR spectra of the southeastern lens in J114637−001132 (i.e., the galaxy denoted as “G2” by Fu et al. 2012) were obtained with the Xshooter spectrograph (Vernet et al. 2011) at the VLT. X-shooter provides simultaneous spectral coverage from 300 nm to 2.5µm.”
Detection of the Far-infrared [O iii] and Dust Emission in a Galaxy at Redshift 8.312: Early Metal Enrichment in the Heart of the Reionization Era (2018, methodology): “We observed MACS0416_Y1 with VLT/X-shooter (Vernet et al. 2011) for a total of 10 hr on target.”
X-shooter reveals powerful outflows in z ∼ 1.5 X-ray selected obscured quasi-stellar objects (2014, methodology): “The XMM-COSMOS obscured QSOs targets have been observed with the X-shooter spectrograph (D’Odorico et al. 2006; Vernet et al. 2011) on the ESO VLT-UT2 (Kueyen) during the nights of February 8-10, 2013, as part of programme 090.”
BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATES AND EMISSION-LINE PROPERTIES OF A SAMPLE OF REDSHIFT z > 6.5 QUASARS (2013, methodology): “We present new spectroscopic data for J1120+0641; observations were carried with the X-Shooter spectrograph (Vernet et al. 2011) mounted on the Very Large Telescope (VLT).”
A spectroscopic survey of Herbig Ae/Be stars with X-shooter – I. Stellar parameters and accretion rates (2015, methodology): “Observations were performed over a period of 6 months between October 2009 and April 2010 using the X-Shooter echelle spectrograph – mounted at the VLT, Cerro Paranal, Chile (Vernet et al. 2011).”
A new extensive library of PHOENIX stellar atmospheres and synthetic spectra (2013, background): “Because we need a stellar spectral library for the analysis of spectra observed with MUSE (Bacon et al. 2010), X-shooter (Vernet et al. 2011), and CRIRES (Kaeufl et al. 2004) for example, a decision was made in favour of the flexibility of a synthetic library that can be extended on the fly – even…”