Astronomical observation depends on developments in instrumentation. The discovery of the 1st exoplanet orbiting a star, 51 Pegasi b, was the result of the development of ultra-stable spectrographs capable of detecting the planet’s tiny perturbations of its star.
The Institute team has designed and developed a number of instruments, mainly for observations in the infrared domain (MONICA, CPAPIR, SIMON, WIRCAM, TRIDENT, CFHTIR). It is also currently participating in the development of many instruments:
Alongside these developments, researchers at the Institute continue to use a number of existing instruments, including the SIMON spectrograph and the CPAPIR wide-field camera, both of them in use at the OMM. The two instruments were designed as part of the doctoral dissertations of Loïc Albert and Étienne Artigau. They went into service in 2004 and 2006, respectively, and are regularly updated by the Institute team.