From bryan.gaensler at sydney.edu.au Tue Sep 23 09:25:03 2014 From: bryan.gaensler at sydney.edu.au (Bryan Gaensler) Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 09:25:03 +1000 Subject: [ASA] Reminder: LSST town-halls in Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne/Perth, 27-31 October 2014 In-Reply-To: <6b93e8abb0164f0e81a34f493fd23321@EX-TPR-PRO-01.mcs.usyd.edu.au> References: <6b93e8abb0164f0e81a34f493fd23321@EX-TPR-PRO-01.mcs.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: Hi all, A reminder about next month's LSST town-halls across Australia - details below. The deadline for registrations and abstracts is 1 October (i.e. next week) - register at http://caastro.org/event/2014-lsst . regards Bryan On 06/08/2014, at 9:19 , Bryan Gaensler wrote: > Dear colleagues, > > SUMMARY: Town-hall meetings on possible Australian participation in LSST will take place over 27-31 October 2014. Register at http://caastro.org/event/2014-lsst. > > The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is an 8.4-m optical and infrared telescope about to commence construction on Cerro Pach?n, Chile. Over the 10-year period 2022 to 2032, LSST will image 18,000 deg^2 of the sky in six bands, visiting every position about 800 times to reach a final co-added magnitude limit r = 27.5. LSST will be transformational for a wide range of topics in astronomy, including weak lensing, BAOs, supernovae, NEOs, stellar astronomy, galaxy evolution, Galactic structure and transients. LSST will also explore new frontiers in astronomy data management, producing 30 TB of data and approximately one million transient alerts per night. Extensive further information on LSST can be found at www.lsst.org. > > LSST offers many scientific opportunities and synergies for Australian astronomers. To update the community on LSST and to initiate discussion about possible Australian participation in LSST, we will be holding a national series of town-hall meetings on LSST over the week of 27-31 October 2014. Our special guests for these events will be Professor Steven Kahn (LSST Director) and Professor ?eljko Ivezi? (LSST Project Scientist). The town-halls will be as follows: > > Mon 27 Oct: Sydney (AAO) > Tue 28 Oct: Canberra (RSAA) > Wed 29 Oct: Melbourne (Swinburne) > Fri 31 Oct: Perth (ICRAR UWA) > > Each workshop will run over approximately 9.30am-3.30pm (tbc), and will feature overviews from Profs Kahn and Ivezi?, contributed talks from Australian astronomers on proposed LSST science, and ample time for discussion about LSST and Australian participation. We invite you to register your attendance at one of these meetings, and to consider making a presentation on your science plans for LSST. > > To sign up for your local LSST town-hall, submit an abstract and for all logistical details, please visit : > > http://caastro.org/event/2014-lsst. > > The deadline for registration and for abstracts is 1 October. There is no fee for attendance. > > We thank CAASTRO, AAO, RSAA, Swinburne, ICRAR and the LSST Corporation for their generous sponsorship of this activity. > > Bryan Gaensler > CAASTRO Director From ausgo at aao.gov.au Wed Sep 24 09:26:52 2014 From: ausgo at aao.gov.au (Australian Gemini Office) Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 09:26:52 +1000 Subject: [ASA] Gemini Instrument Feasibility Studies & funding opportunity Message-ID: <542201BC.9050909@aao.gov.au> Gemini Observatory is pleased to announce the release of the Gemini Instrument Feasibility Studies Request for Proposals. *Please visit this page for full details*. The Gemini Instrument Feasibilities Studies (GIFS) project is part of a program that will provide a number of community-created science-driven instrumentation design study reports and presentations to the observatory, conforming to a number of desired principles. It is our expectation that these studies will contribute to the selected design for the next new facility instrument for the Gemini telescopes. *STAC Principles*: The Science and Technology Advisory Committee identified the following principles for feasibility design study in their 2012B report: (see http://www.gemini.edu/science/public/STAC/stac2012b_report.pdf) * The instrument should be a workhorse instrument, meaning that it has broad scientific appeal and enables a wide range of science cases. * The proposals should be science driven and include science cases. Science cases that provide synergies with new capabilities coming online (e.g. LSST, JWST, ALMA, etc) are highly desirable, especially including capabilities needed to follow up survey discoveries. * The instrument should fit within the technical constraints of the Gemini telescopes as they now exist. * The expected cost of the instrument shall be capped at a cost that is to be determined as part of the process of de?ning the RfP. * The technical risk of the instrument should be modest, i.e. the success of the instrument should not depend upon some not-yet-proven technology. * The instrument should be highly efficient, maintaining the 8-m aperture advantage. * Although proposals for all instruments ?tting these criteria will be fully considered, it is the majority opinion of the STAC that a wide-bandwidth moderate-resolution spectrograph is likely to prove most compelling. Gemini intends to award three or more fixed-price GIFS contracts for instrument feasibility studies, with the maximum available budget for each contract limited to USD 100,000. Our total budget for this activity is USD 300,000. Gemini is looking for science-driven feasibility studies based on a facility instrument costing between USD 8,000,000 and USD 12,000,000 to design, build, test and commission. The preferred duration for such a project is expected to be no more than 6 years. The RfP is *open worldwide*, and not restricted to the Gemini community. The Gemini instrument feasibility study can be awarded to profit or non-profit institutions or companies outside of the nations that fund the Gemini Observatory's instrumentation program. *Gemini encourages collaborations and will provide a mechanism for groups to find additional partners to form a complete team for this work. Thus, groups with some interest in GIFS, but lacking the complete expertise needed to complete the work, should still submit a letter of intent and use our system to find additional partners for the work. * *RFP Schedule:* RfP Issued: 19th September 2014 Bidders Conference: 31st October 2014 Notice of intent to submit proposal due: 17th November 2014 Proposals due: 15th December 2014 at 23:00 Pacific Standard Time *For full details, please visit this page *. We are looking forward to hearing from you, The GIFS Project Team -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrew.green at aao.gov.au Thu Sep 25 11:34:01 2014 From: andrew.green at aao.gov.au (Andy Green) Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:34:01 +1000 Subject: [ASA] Call for AAT Service Time Proposals Message-ID: <23847BB0-3429-4711-AD43-6A3A2D3C12F8@aao.gov.au> The Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) operates a service observing programme at the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) for proposals requiring less than 6 hours of observing time. The next deadline is *** Tuesday, 7 October 2014, at 23:59 *** (Australian Eastern Standard Time, i.e. UTC + 10 hrs) Applications are welcomed from all astronomers, worldwide. The following instruments are available for service observations: 2dF+AAOmega, IRIS2, UCLES, KOALA+AAOmega, 2dF+HERMES. Service Programmes expire after 18 months. Current programmes submitted before 1 Mar 2013 will be purged from the queue. If you have an existing programme in this category, you are invited to resubmit this round. Please see http://www.aao.gov.au/science/observing/apply/service for more information about the AAT Service Programme and application forms. Andy Green AAT Service Coordinator -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au Thu Sep 25 14:27:00 2014 From: john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au (John O'Byrne) Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 14:27:00 +1000 Subject: [ASA] Reminder: Registration deadline: Exploiting MWA surveys for AGN and extragalactic star formation studies - workshop, Perth 28-29 October In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This is a reminder for the GLEAM AGN/SF workshop registration deadline is approaching (30 September 2014) Workshop ?Exploiting MWA surveys for AGN and extragalactic star formation studies? To be held at ICRAR Curtin University, Perth on 28-29 October 2014. Details @ http://www.icrar.org/news/gleam-workshop To confirm your place, please ensure you REGISTER at the website above. Thank you! Carole Professor Carole Jackson Professor, Radio Astronomy & WA Premier?s Fellow International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) Street Address Building 610, Room 134, Brodie-Hall Building 1 Turner Avenue Bentley Technology Park Bentley WA 6102 Post: GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6845 Australia Curtin University Tel | +61 8 9266 4908 Mobile |0401 103 500 Email |carole.jackson at curtin.edu.au www.icrar.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au Sun Sep 28 09:51:50 2014 From: john.obyrne at sydney.edu.au (John O'Byrne) Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 09:51:50 +1000 Subject: [ASA] ARC Centre of Excellence Bids Message-ID: <503CE104-3724-4F0D-BDE2-03E3742BF3F9@sydney.edu.au> The ARC Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) intends to submit an expression of interest (EoI) for an ARC Centre with funding commencing in 2017 in an area of Astronomy related to the Centre's current activities. Themes to be considered include, but are not strictly limited to those of CAASTRO: The evolving Universe, The Dynamic Universe, and the Dark Universe. See http://caastro.org/research for more details. We expect this EoI to be due in March 2015. In the interest of creating the best possible centre proposal, CAASTRO would like to bring together potential CIs and Directors for such a centre. The aim of this process would be to emerge with a clear direction for a centre bid that includes a set of science goals, CIs, and Director. CAASTRO invites interested potential directors for this centre bid to prepare a brief description (<= 3 pages) of their vision for a centre under their direction. Their vision should include the role of their institution which will serve as lead, including scope of local participation, and likely in-kind and cash contributions to the centre. Potential directors will be expected to have a research track record of a similar level to the directors of other successful ARC directors. CAASTRO invites interested potential CIs for this centre bid to prepare a brief description (<= 1 page) of how they believe they and their institution might be involved in the centre. CIs are required to have assurance university funded position for duration of the Centre (2017-2023). We encourage interested EMCRs without continuing positions to discuss with their departments the possibility of their Universities providing assurance of a position for the centre duration if it is successful. These descriptions will be used in a process, moderated by myself, Brian Schmidt, that will select approximately 20 potential CIs/Directors for a meeting, scheduled for December 1st, 2014 at the ANU campus to decide the direction of the centre bid. I, acting as the moderator, will ensure that all participants in the meeting can play a meaningful role in the meeting based on their track record, research interest, and overall institutional relevance to a CoE bid. I will also moderate the December 1st meeting. Submissions are due by Friday, October 17 2014. Email to: brian.schmidt at anu.edu.au (Please put in SUBJECT: 'CoE EoI' and ignore the return email that says I don't read this account) Prospective directors and CIs are encouraged to contact me via email as above with same SUBJECT line if they have questions of any kind. Proposers are reminded that ARC CoEs will typically receive $30-40M in total over a 7 year period, which will limit the size and scope of any bid. CAASTRO currently has 14 CIs spread across 7 institutions which is near the workable maximum. As part of this process, we are not just aiming to rebid with exactly the same personnel but rather wish submit a bid with the best team for its next tranche of scientific objectives. Therefore, not everyone who participates in the meeting will be able to be a CI. Being a current CI or institution of CAASTRO does not guarantee a role in the new centre bid. Through this process, it is not CAASTRO's intent to limit potential bids in other areas of Astronomy, rather it is our intent to open up to the entire community a CAASTRO-related bid that utilises the experience and knowledge of CAASTRO. While it is possible that more than one viable Centre bid will emerge from this process, we believe it is of paramount importance to ensure that any centre Expression of Interests do not overlap and diminish the overall quality of bids. It is in Australian Astronomy's interest - including those who are not part of a successful CoE -to have a successful centre. It frees up significant funding in the ARC DP system for people outside of the centre, increasing the overall availability of funding for Astronomy. Sincerely Yours Brian Schmidt on behalf of the CAASTRO executive -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: