In 2004, financial support was obtained by IvS KU Leuven (FWO and KU Leuven), ULB (FNRS) and ROB (Lotto) to build an echelle spectrograph for the Mercator telescope of the IvS at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma. Meanwhile, additional partners entered into the project (Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg and Observatoire de Genève). The spectrograph is operational since April 2009. HERMES is the acronym for High Efficiency and Resolution Mercator Echelle Spectrograph.

The Royal Observatory of Belgium has the responsability to provide the Data Reduction Software (DRS, work package WP900). ULB and KUL are also contributing. The objective is to provide, in contrast to the existing pipelines, a differential data-reduction system. The WP900 working group involves personnel from the department, as well as colleagues from the other partners in the HERMES project.

The Royal Observatory of Belgium contributed with the Lotto grant to the procurement of optical components for the HERMES echelle spectrograph for the MERCATOR Telescope. For information on the layout of the instrument, see the hermes page at kuleuven.be.

The DRS (data reduction software) is written in python and is only available via the svn.

Several different users manuals and documentation systems are at your disposition here.

Thanks for using our hermes software.