The near infrared VLTI instrument AMBER

¹ Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Parc Valrose, 06108 Nice Cedex 02, France
² Université Joseph Fourier, BP. 53, 38041 Grenoble Cedex, France
³ Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, 50125 Firenze, Italia
⁴ Max Planck Institute für Radiosatronomie, Auf den Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
⁵ Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, BP. 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 04, France
⁶ Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers, CNRS, BP. 287, 75766 Paris Cedex 16, France
⁷ Office National d'Études et de Recherche Aérospatiales, BP. 72, 92322 Châtillon Cedex, France
⁸ Institut de Recherche en Communications Optiques et Microondes, 87060 Limoges Cedex, France
⁹ Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon, 69561 Saint Genis-Laval Cedex, France

Abstract

AMBER is the General User near infrared focal instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. It is a single mode, dispersed fringes, three telescopes instrument. His limiting magnitude of the order of H=13 will allow him to tackle two dozens of extragalactic targets. His extremely high accuracy, in particular in phase closure and differential mode give good hope for very high dynamic range observation, possibly including hot extra solar planets. His relatively high spectral resolution will allow some stellar activity observations. Between this extreme goals, AMBER should have a wide range of applications including Young Stellar Objects, Evolved Stars, circumstellar material and many others. This papers tries to introduce AMBER to its future users and insists on what AMBER measures, how it calibrates it and how this could give the reader ideas for applications.