AMBER (Very Large Telescope)

AMBER, the Astronomical Multi-Beam Recombiner,[1][2] is an instrument mounted on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), combining the light of the three Unit Telescopes in the near-infrared of the VLT-Interferometer (VLTI). It is at the source of a considerable number of publications[3] in the field of optical long-baseline interferometry.

AMBER before its installation at the VLTI in 2003

It combines three out of the four telescopes of the VLTI, through a spectrograph, making it a unique instrument, combining spectroscopy and interferometry. These properties, and the fact that AMBER is an open-community instrument, made it a successful instrument. It can be compared to its fellow in the mid-infrared, the MIDI instrument in terms of the number of publications.

Highlights from the AMBER instrument[4] include the first detection of a Keplerian-rotating disk around a Be star,[5] the discovery of disks around evolved stars,[6][7] the characterization of the disks of young stars,[8][9] the observations of novae,[10] the sharpest images of evolved stars [11][12][13][14] and the characterization of the central dusty torus of active galactic nuclei.[15] As of the end of 2017, 150 refereed papers had been published using AMBER data.[16]