MOONS is being built by 10 different institutions, spread across six different countries. The project is being managed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh. The consortium partners are each building different parts of the instrument all of which will be brought together and assembled in Edinburgh, before the instrument is tested and shipped to the telescope.
The Principal Investigator for the project is Michele Cirasuolo who is based at ESO. The Principal Investigator for the UK is Oscar Gonzalez, based at UK ATC.
The Project Scientist is Roberto Maiolino, based in Cambridge, and the Instrument Scientists are William Taylor and Jay Stephan, both based at UK ATC.
The co-PI’s each representing a different contributing Consortium Institute/Country are:
- Chile – AIUC: M. Zoccali
- France – GEPI, Paris: H. Flores
- Italy – INAF: E. Oliva
- Portugal – IA: J. Afonso
- Switzerland – Université de Genève: S. Paltani
- UK – Cambridge: R. Maiolino
- UK – UK ATC: Oscar Gonzalez
- USA – TAMU: Robert Kennicutt
The main ESO point of contact regarding MOONS is Peter Hammersley.
A list of our industrial partners can be found here.
MOONS: Multi-object Optical and Near-IR spectrograph 