[ASA] Could you circulate this meeting announcement for me?

[Maria Cunningham]

Hi All,

If you could circulate the notice of this informal meeting to be held at UNSW the week after the ASA it would be very much appreciated:

Meeting: New Directions for Molecular Line Astronomy in Australia

** Dates: 19th - 20th July 2017

** Location: University of New South Wales, School of Physics, Old Main Building Room G32. Virtual attendance and participation is also possible - please see below.

** Cost: Free

** Expression of interest for more information on this meeting: Please email maria.cunningham at unsw.edu.au<mailto:maria.cunningham at unsw.edu.au>, and we will add you to the mailing list.

** Topics:

* Observational molecular line astronomy at all wavelengths;
* Australia and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT);
* Facilities that Australian astronomers can access, both now and in the future;
* Statistical methods for analysing large molecular-line datasets;
* Hands-on workshop on principal component analysis (PCA).

** Rationale:

The interstellar medium in the Milky Way Galaxy is extremely complex, being a mixture of high energy particles, warm and cool atomic gas, and molecular gas, the latter being the phase where star formation takes place. Because star formation drives the evolution of galaxies, understanding both how stars form, and how they interact with all phases of the ISM is key to understanding the evolution of galaxies.

Australia is investing heavily in a new generation of low frequency telescopes in radio quiet zones (frequencies of1800 MHz and below, down to 100 MHz), such as ASKAP,  MWA, and, eventually, SKA. These new facilities in radio quiet zones will enable us to continue and extend the research Australia has done so successfully on centimetre molecular-line transitions in the past,  before terrestrial radio interference swamped these frequencies (apart from a few protected bands) in the early 1990s.

However, to understand what centimetre transitions of molecules are telling us about star formation and physical conditions in the interstellar medium, we need also higher-energy transitions, such as those that will be detected in the MALT45+ ACTA legacy survey, and the surveys being undertaken at even higher frequencies on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT).

In this meeting we discuss which molecular-line telescopes and observations are available to Australian astronomers, now and in the future, and which analytical techniques are most likely to be useful in analysing the data available. We will discuss some of these analytical methods, and provide hand-on examples, including image analysis techniques such as principal component analysis. Python scripts for PCA will be made available to participants to work on their own data, and support in interpreting the data will be provided at the workshop.

** Would you like to give a talk?

If you would like to talk at this meeting, please email Maria.cunningham at unsw.edu.au<mailto:Maria.cunningham at unsw.edu.au> with a title and short abstract. We encourage community participation.

Currently we have set aside 1.5 days for the meeting, but this can expand to fill 2 days of needed.

** Virtual attendance

We plan to use Zoom to allow remote participation in the meeting. We can also set up Skype and other parallel remote access methods if required.

** Organising Committee: Maria Cunningham (UNSW), Shari Breen (U Syd), Jessica Dempsey (East Asia Observatory)


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Dr Maria Cunningham
Senior Lecturer
School of Physics
UNSW Sydney
Sydney NSW 2052
Australia
Ph: +61-2-9385 5662
Fax: +61-2-9385 6060
Email: maria.cunningham at unsw.edu.au
CRICOS Provider No 00098G


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