An Overview of Instrumentation for the Large Binocular Telescope

An overview of the 3 facility instruments and 2 strategic interferometric instruments under construction for the Large Binocular Telescope is presented. Planned optical instrumentation includes the Large Binocular Camera (LBC), a pair of wide-field (25′ × 25′) UB/VRI optimized mosaic CCD imagers at the prime focus, and the MultiObject Double Spectrograph (MODS), a pair of dual-beam blue-red optimized longslit spectrographs mounted at the straight-through F/15 Gregorian focus incorporating multiple slit masks for multi-object spectroscopy over a 5′ field and spectral resolutions of 2000-8000. Infrared instrumentation includes the LBT Near-IR Spectroscopic Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research (LUCIFER), a modular near-infrared (0.9-2.5 μm) imager and spectrograph pair mounted at a bent interior focal station and designed for seeing limited (FOV: 4′ × 4′) and diffraction limited (FOV: 0′.5 × 0′.5) imaging and longslit spectroscopy, seeing limited multiobject spectroscopy utilizing cooled slit masks, and optional diffraction limited integral field spectroscopy. Strategic instruments under development for the remaining two combined focal stations include an interferometric cryogenic beam combiner with NIR and thermal IR instruments for Fizeau imaging and nulling interferometry and an optical bench beam combiner with visible and NIR imagers utilizing in the future multi-conjugate adaptive optics for angular resolutions as high as 5 mas at a wavelength of 0.5 μm. The availability of all these instruments mounted simultaneously on the LBT permits flexible scheduling and improved operational support.