A 39-metre telescope—nearly the length of a football pitch—will begin scanning the skies in the early 2030s, and a UK-led instrument called HARMONI will capture both images and spectra of whatever it sees. This instrument, built to work with the telescope’s adaptive optics system, will resolve details far beyond what current telescopes can manage. It addresses a fundamental gap: we cannot yet see the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars, nor the motions of stars near black holes, nor the chemical makeup of the first galaxies. HARMONI will change that. The Principal Investigator oversees the entire project, coordinating an international consortium and liaising with the European Southern Observatory to keep the instrument on track. This is pure fundamental science—no immediate practical application. But similar investments in large telescopes have historically reshaped our understanding of the universe, from discovering dark energy to imaging black holes. Deeper knowledge of how galaxies form and how planetary atmospheres behave could one day inform everything from climate models to the search for life beyond Earth.
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The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is set to transform many areas of astrophysics when it is commissioned in the early 2030's. The first suite of instruments that will harness the huge collecting area and resolving power of this 39-m diameter telescope includes HARMONI -- the UK-led near-infrared integral field spectrograph which will simultaneously create high-resolution images and spectra of planets, stars, and galaxies. This instrument, aided by the exquisite angular resolution delivered by the E-ELT through its adaptive optics system MORFEO, will carry out a large number of breakthrough science programs, including monitoring the weather on planets and moons in the solar system, measuring the atmospheres of (exo)planets around nearby stars, studying the dynamics of stars around nearby massive black holes, determining the structures and dynamics of distant galaxies, and establishing the physical and chemical properties of the first galaxies that formed in the Universe. The Principal Investigator (PI) for HARMONI is the principal advocate for the HARMONI instrument and provides the overall strategic direction and leadership of the Project. The PI is charged with enabling the project’s overall success by ensuring that the necessary level of commitment from the consortium members and funding agencies is met, and that the science capabilities of the instrument are well advertised/promoted, and exploited to the full. The PI is responsible for the high-level management of the project and for maintaining broad oversight of the project and its progress, but is not responsible for its day-to-day technical and project management. The PI is the primary contact point with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) as described in the ESO contract.
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