Introducing the near infrared VLTI instrument AMBER to its users

AMBER is the General User near infrared focal instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. It is a single mode, dispersed fringes, three telescope instrument. A limiting magnitude of the order of H=13 will allow tackling of a fair sample of extra galactic targets. A very high accuracy, in particular in color differential phase and closure phase modes gives good hope for very high dynamical range observations, possibly including hot extra solar planets. The relatively high maximum spectral resolution, up to 10000, will allow stellar activity observations. Between these extreme goals, AMBER has a wide range of applications including Young Stellar Objects, Evolved Stars, circumstellar material and many others. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.