From caroline.foster at sydney.edu.au Thu Mar 1 10:33:01 2018 From: caroline.foster at sydney.edu.au (Caroline Foster) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2018 23:33:01 +0000 Subject: [ASA] Feedback on ESO experience through the Users Committee annual poll Message-ID: <5FEEAF07-015E-4F9E-8834-D320D13500B8@sydney.edu.au> Dear fellow Australian astronomers and AAL members, Apologies if you receive this request more than once. The ESO Users Committee (UC) is currently running its annual ESO users poll. As the Australian representative at the ESO Users Committee (UC), I kindly ask all concerned to fill in the poll, in order to give your feedback on the use of ESO facilities and/or data reduction tools: https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/72CFCVAGXPtXDgJNfGOkqk?domain=eso.org Feel free to send this email to any colleagues who might be interested in giving their feedback to ESO (e.g., colleagues who were visiting astronomers, prepared Phase 2 material, reduced ESO data, etc, in the last two years). In case you want to raise specific issues that do not fit within the poll, do not hesitate to contact me directly. I will transmit your comments to ESO during the upcoming UC meeting in April. The poll will be active until March 26th, so please make sure to fill it by that time. It should take you at most 10-15 minutes. Your feedback is very valuable to us, as it is the only representative way through which the UC can do its advisory role for ESO! This poll is organized by the community, for the community. Thanks for your participation! Clear skies! Caroline Foster (and the ESO-UC) ? Dr Caroline Foster | ASTRO3D Fellow The University of Sydney Faculty of Science, Sydney Institute for Astrophysics 360B, A28 | The University of Sydney | NSW | +61 286 276 411 | +61 430 453 532 caroline.foster at sydney.edu.au | www.carofoster.com Office days: Monday, Tuesday (@AAO), Thursday, Friday INSPIRED ? the Campaign to support the University of Sydney sydney.edu.au/inspired 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. Please think of our environment and only print this email if necessary. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From itso at aao.gov.au Thu Mar 1 16:02:19 2018 From: itso at aao.gov.au (International Telescopes Support Office) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 16:02:19 +1100 Subject: [ASA] ESO Period 102 Call for Proposals Message-ID: ESO Period 102 Call for Proposals The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released the Call for Proposals for Period 102 (for observations between 1 October 2018 ? 31 March 2019). Under the terms of the Strategic Partnership between ESO and Australia, Australian-based astronomers have access to the facilities of the La Silla and Paranal Observatories, specifically the: * 3.6-m telescope; * New Technology Telescope (NTT); * Very Large Telescope (VLT); * Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI); * Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA); and * VLT Survey Telescope (VST). The proposal deadline is *Wednesday 28 March 2018 at noon Central European Summer Time* (9pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time). Complete details on how to apply can be found at https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/6wnnC71ZgLtywE5At8wmwb?domain=eso.org . All applicants should consult the Call for Proposals document for Period 102 (https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/7njmC91ZkQtxDRykS3g-zO?domain=eso.org ), and will require an ESO User Portal account (https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/GqXjCgZowLHNDPXAfEqTFz?domain=eso.org) to submit proposals. Additional information for Australian applicants, including advice for new users, an FAQ, and copies of the ESO Community Day 2017 presentations can be found on the ITSO ESO pages (https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/1IvMCjZrzqHAVlLninYf9t?domain=aao.gov.au). What's new in Period 102? Applicants are strongly encouraged to review the expected changes in instrumentation offered and procedures for Period 102 given in Sec. 1.1 of the Call for Proposals . Among the items likely to be of most interest to the Australian community are: * *Policy on requests for changing or adding new targets:* Teams asking for observations that envision the need for additions or changes of targets, or for adapting their observing strategy after the start of the Period (following, e.g., Gaia DR2 or TESS target releases), must declare it with a note in the Special Remarks section of the proposal (Box 5 of the proposal form). * *Scientific categories A and B:* There have been major changes in the scientific categories A and B, following the recommendations of the OPC. All A and B subcategories were redefined since Period 101. Category A, previously defined as ?Cosmology? is now ?Cosmology and the Intergalactic Medium?. Likewise, category B moved from ?Galaxies and Galactic Nuclei? to ?Galaxies?. The updated list of ESO?s scientific categories and subcategories can be found on the OPC Categories page and in the ESOFORM User Manual. * *New Large and Monitoring Programmes are not offered on UT4 in Period 102:* This is due to the very high load on this telescope with ongoing Large Programmes, as well as MUSE and GRAVITY Guaranteed Time Observations. This condition will be reviewed before the Call for Proposals for Period 103 is issued. In addition to the UT4 instruments (i.e., HAWK-I, MUSE and SINFONI), NACO and VISIR are also currently unavailable for Large Programmes. Furthermore, Large Programmes on the VLTI with the ATs are not offered on any VLTI instrument. * *Large Programmes with Target of Opportunity runs:* Starting in Period 102, Target of Opportunity (TOO) runs will be allowed as part of Large Programmes, i.e., Target of Opportunity observations can be requested over multiple semesters when justified. However, please note that Large Programme proposals with TOO runs cannot make use of the Rapid Response Mode. * *Excellent condition proposals:* Seeing at Paranal is better than 0.5" more than 5% of the time, while episodes of precipitable water vapour smaller than 0.5 mm are encountered six to seven nights per year, mostly during the southern winter. ESO encourages the unique science that can be carried out under one or both of these conditions. Proposals designed to take advantage of one or both of these conditions should include the mention ?Excellent condition proposal? in the \SpecialRemarks macro of the ESOFORM proposal form. Users requiring excellent seeing conditions should specify 0.4" in the \ObservingRun macro in their proposal. Excellent condition proposals must describe why their scientific objectives can only be achieved in these conditions. * *Availability of SINFONI:* To allow for the installation of VISIR at the Cassegrain focus of UT4 for the NEAR experiment, SINFONI will likely be dismounted from UT4 during the second half of Period 102 and moved to UT3. As a consequence, no observations requiring the Laser Guide Star will be executed during the second half of Period 102. * *Adaptive Optics Facility on****UT4:* It is expected that nearly all AOF-related systems will be commissioned by the start of Period 102. The combination of HAWK-I with GRAAL was successfully commissioned during Period 100 in tip-tilt-star-free mode. This combination is now offered for operations starting in Period 102. GALACSI, the adaptive optics module for MUSE, was commissioned during Period 100 in its Ground Layer Adaptive Optics mode (GLAO). The combination of this mode with the MUSE Wide Field Mode has been offered for the first time in Period 101. * *Availability of ESPRESSO:* the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations is located at the Incoherent Combined Coude Focus. Its commissioning in 1-UT mode started during Period 100 and continues in Period 101. The 1-UT mode is offered starting in Period 102. Two basic observing modes are thus available: (1) the High Resolution (HR) mode providing a spectral resolution of 140,000 with the diameter of the fibre aperture on sky of 1"; and (2) the Ultra High Resolution mode (UHR), providing a spectral resolution of 200,000 with the diameter of the fibre aperture on sky of 0.5". ESPRESSO OBs for the 1-UT mode can be executed from any UT. * *VLTI:* The installation, verification and commissioning of NAOMI, the New Adaptive Optics Module for Interferometry ? a low-order adaptive optics system for the ATs ? starts in Period 101 and is expected to be completed by the end of November 2018. Operations will not be possible at the start of Period 102 until the end of the NAOMI commissioning. The refurbishment of each of the four ATs will be completed during Period 101 and will result in an improvement of their throughput. AMBER will be decommissioned at the end of Period 101 and is therefore not offered in Period 102. * *La Silla:* Approximately 15% of the available 3.6-m science time is committed to ongoing large programmes in Period 102. New Large Programmes for the 3.6-m telescope are therefore invited for this Period. The fraction of the available time on the NTT committed to ongoing Large Programmes is ~35%, particularly in dark and grey conditions. Bright time is generally undersubscribed and proposers should consider whether their science case can successfully exploit these conditions. Regular operations with the Laser Frequency Comb on HARPS are expected to become possible during Period 102. * *ULTRACAM:* ULTRACAM is a high-speed imaging photometer designed to study faint astronomical objects at high temporal resolutions. ULTRACAM employs two dichroic beamsplitters and three frame-transfer CCD cameras to provide optical imaging with a field-of-view of 6' and at frame rates of up to 300 Hz simultaneously in the u/g/r, u/g/i or u/g/z bands. This PI instrument is offered to the ESO community for up to 5% of the observing time at the NTT in Period 102. For questions on the instrument and observation strategies, users should contact the instrument PI, Prof. Vik Dhillon (vik.dhillon[AT]sheffield.ac.uk), at least two weeks prior to submitting their proposal. Stuart Ryder International Telescopes Support Office, AAO #ITSOaao -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From benjamin.pope at nyu.edu Sat Mar 3 08:15:20 2018 From: benjamin.pope at nyu.edu (Benjamin Pope) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:15:20 +0000 Subject: [ASA] Planets in Peculiar Places: Register by Friday 9th March Message-ID: Dear ASA, We would like to advertise the Planets in Peculiar Places workshop, to be held at the University of Sydney from *April 5-6*, 2018. Thanks to the generosity of the Hunstead Gift, the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA) at the University of Sydney will be hosting a two-day symposium on April 5-6 on the subject of Planets in Peculiar Places - perhaps the oldest but least studied branch of current exoplanet science, covering planets around pulsars, red giants, white dwarfs, subdwarfs, and hot main sequence stars. With the launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) coming up this is an ideal time to consider the science goals and technology requirements for understanding planetary systems outside the typical search space of FGK dwarfs. Registration is open on our website at http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/planets/PeculiarPlaces/ - we invite submissions for talks, posters, and plain old attendance. *The deadline for registration is Friday, 9th March*. We look forward to you joining us in Sydney! Kind regards, Simon Murphy Benjamin Pope Orsola de Marco Sarah Maddison Daniel Huber Amanda Karakas -- Benjamin Pope NASA Sagan Fellow Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics New York University 726 Broadway New York, NY 10003 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: