From quentin.parker at mq.edu.au Tue Nov 6 19:58:57 2012 From: quentin.parker at mq.edu.au (Quentin Parker) Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 19:58:57 +1100 Subject: [ASA] Fwd: TAIPAN workshop 2nd announcement In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: **********Second Announcement ********* *The next generation of hemispheric redshift surveys and the prospects for TAIPAN, 10?12 Dec 2012, Sydney, Australia* *N.B. REGISTRATION DEADLINE NOVEMBER 16th. * ***********Second Announcement ********** * Go to: http://physics.mq.edu.au/astronomy/workshop_2012/** (It is recommended to register as soon as possible. PhD students are particularly encouraged to apply)* *Macquarie University Research Centre for Astronomy, Astrophysics and Astrophotonics Annual Workshop* *Rationale:* The workshop is designed to bring together experts and researchers to discuss the science prospects and goals of the proposed TAIPAN survey. *Major topics:* Synergies with ASKAP galaxy surveys, precision cosmology, Galaxy evolution, the connection between gas and stars, the impact of environment and mergers, large scale structure, stellar and halo mass functions, star formation and AGN and the intergalactic magnetic field. *What is TAIPAN?* TAIPAN (Transforming Astronomical Imaging surveys through Polychromatic Analysis of Nebulae) is a major new galaxy redshift survey planned for the UK Schmidt Telescope using innovative Starbug fibre positioning technology that allows for several hundred fibres across the UKST?s focal surface. TAIPAN is intended to build on the legacy and extend the highly successful 6dF Galaxy redshift Survey by adding 4x the number of new spectra for fainter galaxies to r ~17 over the entire southern sky and amounting to ~500,000 additional redshifts. *Key features of TAIPAN:* - Three year survey starting 2015 - Implementation of new Starbug fibre probes - 500,000 redshifts to z ~0.2 with r ~17, K ~14 *Confirmed Invited speakers include:* Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Simon Driver, Chris Blake, B?rbel Koribalski, Matthew Colless, Tom Jarrett, Jon Lawrence, Fred Watson, Chris Power and Ray Norris. -- Prof. Quentin A Parker Joint MQ/AAO lecturer in Astronomy Director, MQ Research Centre in Astronomy, Astrophysics & Astrophotonics Director "Space to Grow" Member MQ teaching Excellence Academy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From c.tinney at unsw.edu.au Wed Nov 7 15:34:32 2012 From: c.tinney at unsw.edu.au (Chris Tinney) Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 04:34:32 +0000 Subject: [ASA] Formation of the Veloce Science Team Message-ID: <09BAA12C24AA8E4291B89974D4014A394508AEE6@INFPWXM008.ad.unsw.edu.au> Dear Colleagues, The AAO will be proceeding with Concept Designs over the next 9 months for two instruments as potential next generation facilities for the AAT - HECTOR and Veloce. Put simply, Veloce aims to equip the Anglo-Australian Telescope with a compact ultra-stabilised spectrograph, able to obtain Doppler velocities for Sun-like and M-dwarf stars at sub-m/s precision. In addition, it will provide essentially all the functionality delivered by the current UCLES spectrograph, but collect light from a larger area on the sky (i.e have an ~3" diameter aperture using a CYCLOPS-style IFU, as compared with UCLES' 1" slit), large simultaneous wavelength coverage (~390nm-1um), higher spectral resolution, and better throughput. As well as the AAO's work on exploring the instrumental design aspects (and their cost) for Veloce, a Science Team is being put together to formulate example science cases that can drive the Veloce design. The Veloce Science Team would therefore like to invite all those in Australia interested in high-resolution echelle spectroscopy of any sort, to join us in developing the strongest science case possible. To start the ball rolling, a web page has been created at http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~cgt/cgt/Veloce.html and am looking to identify additional astronomers who want to take part, with a view to organising a first meeting of the Science Team (either virtually, or physically somewhere in Sydney) within the next 4-6 weeks. So if you are interested, please look at the web site and the current Veloce position paper available there, and let me know if you would like to be involved. Cheers Chris Tinney (for the Veloce Science Team) Martin Asplund (ANU), Tim Bedding (U.Syd), Jeremy Bailey (UNSW), Daniel Bayliss (ANU), Joao Bento (Macquarie), Jade Carter-Bond (UNSW), Tobias Ferger (Macquarie), Ken Freeman (ANU), Michael Ireland (Macquarie), Sarah Martell (AAO), Simon O'Toole (AAO), Dennis Stello (U.Syd), Chris Tinney (UNSW), Rob Wittenmyer (UNSW), Duncan Wright (UNSW) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Chris Tinney, Professorial Fellow. (c.tinney at unsw.edu.au) Dept of Astrophysics, UNSW. +61 2 93855168 www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~cgt --------------------------------------------------------------------- From john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au Thu Nov 8 13:41:46 2012 From: john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au (John O'Byrne) Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 13:41:46 +1100 Subject: [ASA] NCA news Message-ID: <6B143174-B9BC-4BB7-B4F6-015711C7877B@sydney.edu.au> Dear colleagues, I'm sending a quick update on behalf of the National Committee for Astronomy (NCA). (a) New NCA member Last month, we sent out an open call inviting nominations from the Australian astronomy community to fill one vacancy on the NCA. Nine nominations were received, and these were discussed by a small committee consisting of the NCA Chair (Elaine Sadler), the President of the Astronomical Society of Australia (Kate Brooks), and one Academy Fellow who is not currently an NCA member (Warrick Couch). This committee nominated Professor Steven Tingay (Curtin University) as the new NCA member, and Steven's nomination was endorsed by the Academy Council meeting at their recent meeting. Steven will join the NCA for our next meeting in mid-December. I welcome him to the committee, and thank all those who sent in nominations. It is clear that we have a strong talent pool to draw from when future NCA vacancies arise. (b) Change of NCA Chair I'd also like to let you know that I will be stepping down as NCA Chair from 1 December this year, with Professor Stuart Wyithe (University of Melbourne) taking over as the new Chair. After three years as NCA Chair (including the completion of the Mid-Term Review of our Decadal Plan), I think this is the right time to hand over to someone new and I am delighted that Stuart has agreed to take on this role. I will remain as a regular NCA member for the remainder of my current membership term. Best wishes, Elaine ____________________________________ Professor Elaine M. Sadler FAA Chair, National Committee for Astronomy School of Physics A28 University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia email: ems at physics.usyd.edu.au phone: +61 2 9351 2622 fax: +61 2 9351 7726 ____________________________________ From kglazebrook at swin.edu.au Thu Nov 8 17:25:45 2012 From: kglazebrook at swin.edu.au (Karl Glazebrook) Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 06:25:45 +0000 Subject: [ASA] UKIRT opportunity and Australia Message-ID: <038B7CB2A5C22249979C060E26BE90AA177D5243@gsp-ex03.ds.swin.edu.au> Dear ASA members, The U.K.'s Science & Technology Facilities Council has announced an opportunity for a new entity to take over the ownership and operation of the U.K. Infrared Telescope, a 3.9m optical/IR telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The opportunity is detailed in the 'UKIRT Prospectus' at: http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/UKIRT/news/UKIRT_AO/ and 'Expressions of Interest' (which can be very wide-ranging) are due Nov 30. The purpose of this email is to solicit Australian interest in future science with UKIRT. Karl Glazebrook (Swinburne, kglazebrook at swin.edu.au) and Chris Tinney (UNSW, cgt at phys.unsw.edu.au) have offered to coordinate any Australian response. At this time we do not realistically envision UKIRT becoming wholly Australian owned but we can see Australians being involved with overseas partners in collaborative science projects and raising part of the funding required for operations (e.g. via a LIEF proposal). The intention is to submit an EOI listing science projects that we may wish to be involved in and saying we would wish to be matched up with other similarly interested parties. UKIRT has a range of instruments but of particular interest is the Wide Filed Infrared Camera (WFCAM) which was used to carry out the UKIDSS surveys and has a 0.19 deg^2 coverage per pointing. Median UKIDSS seeing was 0.8 arcsec. The current science projects identified so far of interest to Karl and Chris are: A WFCAM wide field survey of massive red galaxies and clusters at 1 1E11 Msun. (Glazebrook) An ultra deep survey with WFCAM in a single field using new medium and narrow band filters to identify galaxies at z>7 and measure their spectral energy distributions and angular clustering. (Glazebrook) Parallax measurements with a several year baseline of brown dwarf candidates identified from the WISE survey via a wide field repeat survey. (Tinney) A major program of near-infrared photometric measurements of brown dwarf candidates identified from the WISE survey. (Tinney) If anyone is interested in these science cases, or wishes to add other ones please contact Karl or Chris as appropriate to discuss this further. Early discussion is encouraged given the tightness of the deadline. Karl and Chris will merge science cases and submit a final EOI if there is a sufficient quorum of interest in Australia. ---------------- Karl Glazebrook, University Distinguished Professor Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology Contact: +61-3-9214-4384 kglazebrook at swin.edu.au astronomy.swin.edu.au/karl galacticturmoil.org @karlglazebrook From john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au Sat Nov 10 00:30:46 2012 From: john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au (John O'Byrne) Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:30:46 +1100 Subject: [ASA] Astrophotonics Research Fellow Message-ID: CUDOS/AAO Astrophotonics Research Fellow CUDOS, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems at the University of Sydney and the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) wish to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for a joint appointment in the field of astrophotonics. This field is a relatively new endeavour that entails the development and application of photonic devices to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of astronomical instrumentation. All applications must be submitted via the University of Sydney careers website. Visit www.sydney.edu.au/positions and search by the reference number (817/0512) for more information. CUDOS contact Professor Benjamin Eggleton, Director of CUDOS on ben.eggleton at sydney.edu.au AAO contact Jon Lawrence, Head of Instrument Science on jl at aao.gov.au General enquiries can be directed to Fabrice No?l fabrice.noel at sydney.edu.au CLOSING DATE: 13 January 2013 (11:30PM Sydney time) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JOHN O?BYRNE Associate Head (Teaching & Learning) Chair, School Teaching & Learning Committee Secretary, Astronomical Society of Australia Inc. Sydney Institute for Astronomy School of Physics | Faculty of Science THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Rm 222, 44-70 Rosehill St Redfern H90 (see map) | (alternate: Rm 205, Physics Building A28) Postal address: School of Physics | The University of Sydney | NSW | Australia | 2006 T +61 2 9351 3184 | F +61 2 9351 7726 E john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au | W http://sydney.edu.au/science/physics/~obyrne CRICOS 00026A This email plus any attachments to it are confidential. Any unauthorised use is strictly prohibited. If you receive this email in error, please delete it and any attachments. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This email uses 100% recycled words and ideas. 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