The  ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT)  is expected to provide unique and unparalleled data, comparable in depth to that of JWST, at least, but with a sixfold increase in sharpness. These capabilities result from the synergy between the world's largest aperture and the state-of-the-art Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) system, MORFEO. MORFEO is designed to correct a wide field for the distortion of light induced by turbulence of the Earth’s atmosphere, enabling the supported instruments, such as MICADO initially,  to explor the Universe at unprecedented depth and clarity.

The spectrograph that will have the chance to occupy the 2nd port of MORFEO@ELT will therefore be the most powerful spectrograph in the JWST era, the one able to see what the others cannot. 

SHARP is a near-IR (0.95-2.45 μm) multi-mode spectrograph conceived for the 2nd port of MORFEO@ELT. SHARP is composed of a slitlets Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS), NEXUS, and a multi Integral Field Unit (mIFU), VESPER. The wavelength range extending up to ~2.45 μm and the AO-assisted observing mode, will allow SHARP to study the nearby and the early Universe at unprecedented detail. MORFEO-SHARP will resolve the physical properties of the first galaxies and the star forming regions within galaxies far back in cosmic time, will find the first stars born in the Universe, and provide the individual spectra of nearby young stellar objects.

SHARP aims at being the ELT MCAO-assisted near-IR multi-object spectrograph complementing MICADO, the ELT MCAO-assisted near-IR imager.