Infrared instrumentation for large telescopes: an alternative approach

I very briefly describe the latest generation near infrared (1–2.5 μm) instruments which are available on, or under development for ‘large’ (D≥3.5 m) telescopes. Most of the imagers under construction are limited to relatively small fields, while the spectrometers aim at quite high resolving powers. The alternative instruments which I discuss here are – WIDE, a relatively low–cost instrument for the prime focus of LBT and/or of TNG optimized for deep imaging of very large fields (12’×12’ on LBT and 26’×26’ on TNG) through the 1 μm, J, H, K’ broad–band filters. – AMICI, an ultra–high efficiency, low resolution disperser optimized for collecting complete 0.9-2.5 μm spectra of very faint objects. This device is mounted in NICS (the IR instrument for TNG) and should soon deliver spectra with quality comparable to that obtained with instruments on 8m class telescopes with similar integration times.