Participants of the 1st KMOS VVVX–GalCen Spectroscopic Survey Workshop, held in December 2025 at the Institute of Astrophysics of Universidad Andrés Bello (Chile). The meeting brought together the scientific team involved in the VVV/VVVX surveys and in planning the new spectroscopic survey with the KMOS instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Credit: Dante Minniti
Astronomers began this week the first observations of a new large international survey called KMOS VVVX-GalCen Spectroscopic Survey, which will investigate tens of thousands of objects in the central region of the Milky Way. The project includes the participation of researcher Roberto K. Saito, professor at the Department of Physics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), the only Brazilian institution present in the main survey team.
The observations are carried out at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), one of the most advanced optical observatories in the world, located at the Cerro Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert, northern Chile. The telescope is operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The KMOS VVVX-GalCen is the first major spectroscopic survey led from Chile, and it was selected by ESO as one of only two large programs that will use the KMOS (K-band Multi Object Spectrograph) instrument over the next three years. In total, the project received 140 nights of observation, which corresponds to a scientific investment estimated at about 8 million dollars in telescope time.
The project is led by astronomers Matías Gómez, from Universidad Andrés Bello (Chile), and Francisco Nogueras-Lara, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucía (Spain). Saito is part of the central group of researchers in the survey and is responsible for one of the scientific areas of the project.
“The first night of observations at Paranal was monitored remotely and went smoothly. Now begins the stage of analyzing the first spectra,” explains the researcher.
The observed targets were selected from two previous highly successful surveys: the VVV/VVVX, which mapped much of the Milky Way in infrared light over the past decade, and GALACTICNUCLEUS, a high-resolution survey of the innermost regions of our galaxy. The new survey will obtain spectra, a technique that allows decomposing the light of celestial objects and revealing properties such as chemical composition, temperature, and velocity.
Among the main scientific objectives are the study of rogue planets that wander freely through space, star clusters hidden by galactic dust, star-forming regions, and distant galaxies concealed behind the plane of the Milky Way. In the future, the survey is also expected to include spectroscopic observations of objects identified by the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), expanding the scientific possibilities of the project.
Learn more on the project website.
