Most efficient spectrograph to shoot the Southern skies

		IMAGE: This illustration shows the three spectra produced simultaneously by the new efficient X-shooter instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. X-shooter can record the entire spectrum of a celestial object (in... Click here for more information.

"X-shooter offers a capability that is unique among astronomical instruments installed at large telescopes," says Sandro D'Odorico, who coordinated the Europe-wide consortium of scientists and engineers that built this remarkable instrument. "Until now, different instruments at different telescopes and multiple observations were needed to cover this kind of wavelength range, making it very difficult to compare data, which, even though from the same object, could have been taken at different times and under different sky conditions."