Paranal Instrumentation Programme

ABSTRACT The development plan for instrumentation at the Paranal Observatory was outlined at SPIE in 2012. Its overall go alis to keep Paranal at the forefront of ground-based astronomy. In addition to the completion of the current secondgeneration instruments, the installation of the Adaptive Optics Facility and execution of the Very Large Telescop eInterferometer mid-term implementation plan, it will allow one new instrument, or instrument upgrade, to be initiated per year. The plan is divided into two phases. Ov er 2013-2017, instruments are selected and developed with the criteria of filling the VLT capabilities and maintaining the balance between dedicated and general purposefacilities. Beyond 2018, the instruments will be deployed in the era of maturity of the European Extremely LargeTelescope (E-ELT). The strategy for the second phase derive s from analysis of VLT scie nce in the E-ELT era, to be fully shaped in the coming five years. The Call for ideas for a new instrument for the New Technology Telescope atLa Silla, fu lly funded by the community, has just been issued . Keywords: I5 and optical ground based instrumentation, Paran al Ob serv atory