The GTC Adaptive Optics (GTCAO) system will provide diffraction-limited capabilities in the near infrared to the GTC telescope. At first, it will use a Natural Guide Star (NGS) as a reference source, and later it will be upgraded to a Sodium Laser Guide Star (LGS), which will significantly increase the sky coverage. The GTCAO system is expected to

Context. Exoplanets orbiting very close to their parent star are strongly irradiated. This can lead the upper atmospheric layers to expand and evaporate into space. The metastable helium (He I) triplet at 1083.3 nm has recently been shown to be a powerful diagnostic to probe extended and escaping exoplanetary atmospheres. Aims: We perform high

Context. This work is based on deep multi-band (g, r, i) data from the Fornax Deep Survey with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). We analyse the surface brightness profiles of the 19 bright early-type galaxies (ETGs; m B ≤ 15 mag) inside the virial radius of the Fornax cluster (R vir ∼ 0.7 Mpc), in the mass range 8 × 10 8 ≤ M * ≤ 1.2 × 10 11 M ☉. Aims

Context. A possible pathway for understanding the events and the mechanisms involved in galaxy formation and evolution is an in-depth investigation of the galactic and inter-galactic fossil sub-structures with long dynamical timescales: stars in the field and in stellar clusters. Aims: This paper continues the Fornax Deep Survey (FDS) series

Low-mass extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars formed from a mixture of material of the primordial nucleosynthesis and matter ejected from the first supernovae. The chemical composition of EMP stars, especially those still on the main sequence, holds crucial information on the properties of the first stars, the first supernovae and the early chemical

The optical design has been updated to include an Adaptive Secondary Mirror that becomes part of the Multi-Conjugated Adaptive Optics (MCAO) system. This new concept allows simplifying the optical design reducing the number of optical surfaces before the instrument suite. The project has also announced a call for tenders for the Preliminary Design