From itso at aao.gov.au Mon Aug 15 09:15:21 2016 From: itso at aao.gov.au (International Telescopes Support Office) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 09:15:21 +1000 Subject: [ASA] Magellan Science Meeting In-Reply-To: <57B01468.4060704@aao.gov.au> References: <57B01468.4060704@aao.gov.au> Message-ID: <606d19a6-a7ce-8bcd-0bbf-155ab8a3ae70@aao.gov.au> The AAO's International Telescopes Support Office intends to offer individual travel grants (up to $2000) to encourage and assist Australian representation at this meeting. Potential attendees are invited to submit an expression of interest in receiving a travel grant by sending an e-mail along with their submitted abstract to itso at aao.gov.au by *31 October 2016*, and will be informed of any award by 2 November 2016. Stuart Ryder International Telescopes Support Office, AAO on behalf of Gayandhi De Silva AAL observer on the Magellan Science Advisory Committee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *We are pleased to announce the 4th Magellan Science Symposium will be held at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC on December 7 and 8, 2016.* Participants will present and discuss recent scientific results from Magellan observations with the twin goals of communicating the exciting research being done and looking toward what new capabilities will keep Magellan on the forefront of discovery. The Symposium format will consist of all contributed talks of about 15-20 minutes arranged by scientific topic with substantial time for discussion. A continental breakfast and lunch will be served on site both days. We welcome submissions of abstracts for contributed talks, and we anticipate time for about 35 talks. We also welcome abstracts for poster presentations, and there will be substantial time for viewing poster contributions. Posters are particularly invited for descriptions of new instrument concepts. Registration is $75 and includes breakfast, lunch, and coffee on both days of the meeting. We look forward to seeing you in DC! *Deadlines:* * Abstract Submission : November 4, 2016 * Registration : November 18, 2016 Registration and abstract submission, plus more information, can be found at the meeting website: http://home.dtm.ciw.edu/Magellan-Science-Symposium-2016/ The meeting will take place at Carnegie?s headquarters at 1530 P St. NW, Washington, DC 20005. This historic building is in the heart of Washington, DC. A block of rooms is available at the nearby Holiday Inn-Central/White House. Participants should make room reservations as soon as possible, as we expect the block to fill. Scientific Organizing Committee: * Alycia Weinberger (Carnegie DTM, Chair) * Mike Gladders (University of Chicago) * Barry Madore (Carnegie Observatories) * Mario Mateo (University of Michigan) * David Osip (Las Campanas Observatory) * Andy Szengyorgyi (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) * Johanna Teske (Carnegie DTM and Observatories) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aatts at aao.gov.au Mon Aug 15 10:54:15 2016 From: aatts at aao.gov.au (AAT Tech Secretary) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 10:54:15 +1000 Subject: [ASA] AAT Call for Proposals - Semester 2017A - deadline 5PM, 15 September 2016 Message-ID: 2017A Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) Call for Proposals The main proposal deadline for AAT in Semester 2017A (February 2017 - July 2017) is: Thursday, 15 September 2016, at 17:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time, i.e. UTC + 10 hrs Proposals to ATAC can be submitted until the deadline using the new Lens proposal form and are welcomed from all astronomers worldwide. Applying for AAT Telescope Time through ATAC Important information for applicants Time available for new proposals: because of existing Large Programs and other obligations, there are roughly 114 nights available for new proposals in Semester 17A (16 dark, 34 grey, 64 bright). The Large AAT Program, the SAMI Survey, has been allocated 30 dark nights at certain RAs. New programs with targets outside of these RAs are more likely to be scheduled. The RA information for Large AAT Programs is available at this link . A separate call for Large AAT Programs has been made for programs starting in 2017A. More information is available at this link . Proposals for Long Term AAT Programs are welcome in 2017A. A separate call for CTIO time swap proposals will be made in early-September. More information is available at this link . For semester 2018A, the AAO is planning an intervention on the 2dF fibre cable and on HERMES. Both the 2dF-fed AAOmega and HERMES will be unavailable for a period of approximately three months at the start of semester 2018A. Other instruments that use AAOmega but not the 2dF fibre feed (e.g. SAMI, KOALA) will still be available during this period. Based upon historical weather trends, about 33% of time is lost to bad weather. From 2016B proposers are therefore required to multiply their request by a factor of 1.5, to allow for time lost to weather. New proposal submission system The AAO has moved to a proposal submission system, known as Lens . This system is a user account based system, which will allow for improved security and better tracking of past and current proposals. There is an FAQ available for Lens, available via the FAQ tab in Lens itself, or via the direct link http://www.aao.gov.au/lens/faq . Users who have applied for time as PI in the previous semesters (i.e. starting from 2013A to 2014B) have had accounts pre-configured and will have received an email with their login details. Users that applied for time from 2015A will also have a Lens account. All other users are encouraged to register with the system at https://www.aao.gov.au/lens/register Note that users cannot be added to proposals if they are not registered in Lens. Please make sure that all investigators on a proposal have registered well before the deadline! For any queries or comments, please email lens at aao.gov.au . Historical oversubscription rates The figure below shows the historical oversubscription rates at the AAT. Large program allocations are excluded from these calculations and errorbars are from Poisson statistics. The fluctuations are largely dominated by whether Large programs were already scheduled when the call for proposals was made. Instrument status The MITLL camera, a red-sensitive deep depletion detector, has been decommissioned and is no longer available for use on the UCLES spectrograph. IRIS2 Multi-Object Spectroscopic (MOS) mode has been decommissioned. SAMI status SAMI is now a general-user instrument. SAMI is the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral-field unit that feeds the AAOmega spectrograph. SAMI provides 13 fibre-based IFUs called 'hexabundles', each with a field of view of 15 arcseconds and are deployed by plug plate anywhere within a 1-degree field of view using the AAT's Prime Focus top end. For further information about observing with SAMI, see this website , or contact the SAMI instrument scientist Julia Bryant (julia.bryant at aao.gov.au ). Note, the 2dFDR data reduction pipeline has been tested using the AAOmega gratings that are used for the SAMI survey (580V and 1000R), but has not been tested with other AAOmega gratings. HERMES status HERMES is now a general-user instrument. HERMES is a four-channel, bench-mounted high-resolution spectrograph for use with the 2dF top end. The wavelength ranges of the four channels are fixed at 4715-4900 ?, 5649-5873 ?, 6478-6737 ? and 7585-7887 ?. The spectral resolution is nominally R~28,000, which can be raised to R~45,000. Questions about expected instrument performance should be directed to the HERMES instrument scientist, Gayandhi De Silva (gayandhi.desilva at aao.gov.au ). UCLES UCLES is a cross-dispersed echelle spectrograph located at the coude focus offering high resolution and good wavelength coverage. UCLES can receive light from the telescope via a 5 mirror coude train or via CYCLOPS, a 16-fibre single-target Integral Field Unit. CYCLOPS reformats an approximately 3 arcsec diameter aperture on the sky into an 16 x 0.6 arcsec pseudo-slit at the entrance of the UCLES spectrograph. A typical 1" slit will achieve R~50,000 whereas the CYCLOPS 0.6" hexagonal fibres achieve R~70,000. UCLES has a 31.6 lines/mm echelle grating, and a 79 lines/mm echelle grating. For questions regarding UCLES or the CYCLOPS IFU please contact the Instrument Scientist, Duncan Wright (duncan.wright at aao.gov.au ). KOALA status KOALA (Kilo-fibre Optical AAT Lenslet Array) has replaced SPIRAL as the integral-field capability to AAOmega. KOALA has a selectable spatial resolution of 0.7"or 1.25", an increase in throughput at all wavelengths, particularly at the extreme blue, and simplified field rotation. Information on KOALA can be found in the instrumentation page and a new exposure time calculator is available. Questions about expected performance should be directed to the KOALA instrument scientist, ?ngel L?pez-S?nchez (angel.lopez-sanchez at aao.gov.au ). Remote observing Since Semester 13A, remote observing from the AAO's North Ryde headquarters has been available as an option for all AAT facility instruments. Observers who wish to travel to Sydney to carry out remote observations can continue to access the existing Travel and Accommodation support offered to AAT observers. From semester 16B, it will be possible to observe remotely from the remote observing facilities at the ANU and ICRAR. Use of these facilities will be restricted to experienced observers who have used the AAT in the past two years. Observers wishing to use these facilities will not be eligible for travel support from the AAO. Service time If projects require fewer than 6 hours of observing time, they can be performed in service time. Applications for service time are made electronically direct to the AAO and are now accepted year-round. See the AAT Service Observing page for more details. Acknowledgements The AAO requests all publications based upon data allocated through the AAO include the following acknowledgement: Based [in part] on data acquired through the Australian Astronomical Observatory, [via program XXX]. How to Apply for AAT Time - the Basic Steps Instrument status and policies All ATAC applicants should check the latest Instrument Availability and recent Policy Announcements . If you require further clarification on any issue, then please contact the AAT Technical Secretary Lee Spitler (aatts at aao.gov.au ). See Special Override Rules for proposals seeking time as an override on another program's time and the Long Term Program page for those seeking long term status. Proposals requiring at most 6 hours of observing time should be submitted to the AAO's Service Observing program. If the PI, and at least half the observing team are from European countries, they may apply for AAT time through the OPTICON program . Proposal content Full Technical Details, outlining how you derived your time estimates, observing constraints, and any special requests should be included in the scientific case (preferably under a separate section heading). Proposals should be written such that the content and significance is understandable by a wide range of astronomers. If your proposal seeks time on two instruments, outline carefully the relative requirements of the different instrument set-ups, including the split in observing time between the instruments. If the observations are essential to the completion of a student's PhD thesis, then a full explanation must be given in the science case. No special consideration is given to proposals involving PhD students, except when attempting to schedule proposals near the cut-off, when some priority may be given. After accounting for overheads (detector readout, calibrations and telescope slewing), observers are required to factor in an additional 50% to account for bad weather. All applicants should be aware that it is the policy of the AAO that any backup project must use the same instrument as the main project. A list of the principal targets (field centres for AAOmega+2dF programs) should be prepared as a separate PDF document. The target list should contain target name, RA (h m s), Dec (d m s), target brightness, and priority. There is a 2-page limit for this target list PDF file. Other document formats will not be accepted. Proposal submission details Prepare your main proposal offline, including an abstract, target list, science case, and technical justification. The science case and technical justification together should be, in PDF format, no more than three pages total, with two pages for the science case and one page for technical justification. Those three pages should include all references and figures, use 11pt font (or larger), and have at least 10mm margins. Colour figures are accepted. Other document formats will not be accepted. Applicants seeking Long Term status may be allowed to submit up to five pages, provided prior permission is obtained well in advance from the ATAC Secretary, Helen Woods (helen.woods at aao.gov.au ). Submitting your proposal When your proposal details are ready, submit your application to ATAC through Lens, the AAT's new proposal system. As noted above, this is a user-account-based system and all investigators on a proposal must be registered. Contacting the ATAC Secretariat The Secretary, ATAC Australian Astronomical Observatory PO Box 915 North Ryde NSW 1670 Australia Phone: +61 (0)2 9372 4800 Fax: +61 (0)2 9372 4880 Email enquiries: Helen Woods (helen.woods at aao.gov.au ) --- Lee Spitler AAT Technical Secretary Senior Lecturer Australian Astronomical Observatory & Macquarie University Sydney, Australia P: +61 (2) 9850 4161 www.physics.mq.edu.au www.aao.gov.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From David.Luchetti at industry.gov.au Fri Aug 19 15:51:57 2016 From: David.Luchetti at industry.gov.au (Luchetti, David) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 05:51:57 +0000 Subject: [ASA] Australian SKA Project Director's Update [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] Message-ID: Dear SKA stakeholders, For your information, my latest Project Director's Update is now available on the SKA Australia website (www.ska.gov.au). The update is also pasted below and summarises recent SKA-related activities and developments in Australia and internationally. Thanks for your ongoing interest in the Australian SKA project. Kind Regards, David Luchetti July 2016 The SKA has been called the ultimate Big Data project - its antennas producing a data stream several times greater than today's entire global internet traffic. So how do you get that volume of information all the way from Australia's remote SKA site to the supercomputers needed to process it? A team led by the Cisco Internet of Everything Innovation Centre in Western Australia recently took a giant step towards that goal by establishing a 100GB/s data link between the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, future site of the SKA-Low telescope, and Curtin University in Perth, a distance of some 800 kilometres through some of the most remote places on earth. Impressively the team managed this feat with no data loss. Australia-based work in a range of other SKA-related technology has continued apace in recent months. Amongst the highlights were: * An ICRAR, University of Western Australia and CSIRO collaboration have developed a new frequency synchronisation technology that performs up to 100 times better than required for the SKA; * The Phase 2 upgrade of the Murchison Widefield Array low frequency telescope, with 72 new antenna tiles installed; * Site works for the SKA-Low Aperture Array Verification System 1 (AAVS1) were finalised. AAVS1, scheduled for completion in late 2016, will be a significant proof-of-concept system allowing the design of SKA1-Low to be optimised; * CSIRO's ASKAP telescope produced the world's first ever 36-beam Phased Array astronomy image. The field of view was an impressive 30 square degrees (approximately the area of 150 full Moons). This image demonstrates that ASKAP's new Phased Array Feed (PAF) receiver systems and bespoke software are working well; * The iconic Parkes telescope has been granted 'SKA pathfinder' status by the Square Kilometre Array Organisation (SKAO) due to its role in testing new receiver systems. Parkes will now play a key role in the development of PAFs for use with the SKA. April saw a number of important meetings to advance the intergovernmental preparations for SKA construction and operations. SKA Organisation Board meeting number 20 took place in Pune, India and later in April, the third treaty negotiation meeting between SKA member countries was held in Rome. There will now be a final meeting in late September 2016 to agree the final SKA Convention and funding commitments from the members. Also in April, the inaugural Australia-ChinA ConsortiuM for Astrophysical Research (ACAMAR) Workshop was held in Perth along with the second annual OzSKA meeting. The ACAMAR discussions focused on radio astronomy science and SKA, Antarctic astronomy science, astronomical instrumentation and big data challenges, whilst at OzSKA, presentations on SKA-related science were given by many prominent radio astronomers. In July, SKA Organisation Board meeting number 21 was held in Manchester with a number of pleasing outcomes. Spain looks set to become a member of the SKA Organisation later this year and SKA-Low technology has been confirmed as part of the core program for continued advancement during the operation of the SKA. The Board also applauded MeerKAT's achievement of first light and developments at the Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory were welcomed. In other news, the SKA has been declared a Landmark Project by the European Commission in its recently published research infrastructure Roadmap 2016, which identifies key research facilities necessary to strengthen scientific excellence and competitiveness in the EU. I look forward to updating you on further project development soon. Kind Regards, David Luchetti Australian SKA Project Director Australian Square Kilometre Array Office __________________________________________ Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Level 9, 10 Binara Street, Canberra City ACT 2601 GPO Box 9839, Canberra ACT 2601 Ph: +61-2-6213 6068 Mob: +61 411 021 135 Email: david.luchetti at industry.gov.au Internet: www.ska.gov.au [http://www.ska.gov.au/sitecollectionimages/logo-auska.gif] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 4282 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From vkilborn at swin.edu.au Fri Aug 19 22:57:48 2016 From: vkilborn at swin.edu.au (Virginia Kilborn) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 12:57:48 +0000 Subject: [ASA] Vale Bruce Slee Message-ID: Dear members, It is with much sadness I relay the news of the passing of ASA Foundation member Bruce Slee. Many of the community will have known Bruce, through his outstanding contribution to Australian astronomy. Bruce's colleague Elaine Sadler had the following words to say on his passing: Very saddened to report that our colleague Bruce Slee died last night at the age of 92. Bruce's passing comes only a day after the workshop "A Celebration: Bruce Slee and 70 Years of Radio Astronomy" that we held in Sydney to celebrate his long career. Bruce was one of the pioneers of radio astronomy, and his 1949 Nature paper (with co-authors John Bolton and Gordon Stanley) announced the optical identification of the radio sources Centaurus A (NGC 5128), Virgo A (M87) and Taurus A (the Crab nebula). He continued to be active in astronomical research well into his 90s, and his most recent paper was published only a few months ago. Bruce's grand-daughter Belinda has sent the following message: "I was so proud of my grandfather when I saw that the workshop was being held. I had no idea but then again he often didn't tell us about these things as he is such a humble person. Unfortunately my grandfather passed away tonight in hospital. It has come very unexpectedly for us. Obviously at this stage we have no idea of any funeral arrangements we are just trying to get over the shock of it. I know there are many people who would like to know of his passing so if you can please let them know it would be much appreciated." Our sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Bruce. Regards, Virginia President, ASA Virginia Kilborn Chair, Department of Physics and Astronomy Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology Swinburne University of Technology Ph (w) +61 (0)3 9214 4380 WWW: http://bit.ly/24vsqSR -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: