First light (at ING): November 1991. First scheduled observation: February 1992.
De-commissioned: 31 July 2002.
Designed and built by: Institute of Astronomy, Utrecht, under a contract placed by RGO with the Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astronomy. A formal specification was issued in May 1986. The acquisition and guidance unit was constructed at the Kapteyn Institute at Roden.
Description:
The Utrecht Echelle Spectrograph (UES) was a high-resolution spectrograph for the William Herschel Telescope, permanently mounted at one of the f/11 Nasmyth foci. The design is similar from the astronomer´s viewpoint to one being produced for the f/36 coudé focus Anglo-Australian Telescope by a team at University College London. This similarity is beneficial in the use of the spectrographs and data reduction as well as in the production phase.
A new UES derotator was commissioned in December 1997. The new derotator had high UV throughput, but a smaller field of view. The old derotator remained available for long-slit work.
Time allocations:
Nights scheduled since semester 2007B
Instrument information: http://www.ing.iac.es/astronomy/instruments/ues/index.html
More:
UES
Users´ Manual
Research impact:
Scientific highlights (13)
Publications (149 from ING paper count)
Outreach:
Media releases (7)
Multimedia:
Photo archive (2)