[ASA] An update from your ESO UC representative: Annual User Poll, and 48th (2024) Users Committee meeting

[Sarah Sweet]

Dear Australian astronomers,

Please distribute this update to others as appropriate.

I’m writing as your ESO Users Committee (UC) representative. My role is to represent Australian ESO Users and act as a capillary link between ESO and the Australian community.

Annual User Poll - closes 14 March

UC seeks feedback through an annual poll to assess your experiences with ESO operations: https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/_HAxC6XQ4LfGYzlkmspfwT58cu4?domain=eso.org. This year there is a special focus on quality assurance and data quality.

I encourage all past, current and future users of ESO to complete the survey, especially but not only those who have submitted Large Programmes or considered submitting them. Your perspectives will be invaluable- please be assured that ESO takes the time to read all of the comments you take the time to provide.

The poll is open until 14 March 2025, ~one week before the many excellent observing proposals we hope will be submitted from the Australian community!

Survey input is, of course, anonymised and will be gathered to provide recommendations to ESO concerning operations.

ESO UC48, including 2024 poll report

The report from last year’s poll can be found at https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/t6iZC71R2NTW1ljMNuWhRTolSit?domain=eso.org, including a summary of the ESO community followed by a ‘fact sheet’ from each country. In both the Australian respondents (18) and the broader ESO community, the report indicates high rates of satisfaction overall, with a neutral feeling about how helpful LPO distributed peer review feedback was to improve proposals.

The special topic was “Large Programmes.” As may be expected from recent Australian successes, 7/13 Australian respondents to that topic were involved in LPO large programmes, and 6/13 consider submitting one in future. Some found the data reduction and analysis workload higher than expected because of the functionality of the tools, especially with preparing high-level products to the archive. One comment in particular pointed out the ubiquitous delays in execution, and requested clearer and more regular communication about projected time-lines for execution.

The ESO Users Committee met on 25-26 April 2024 in hybrid mode. The agenda, presentations and other documents are at https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/naSVC81V0PTwp183qF2iDTyvz8a?domain=eso.org, though not all files are publicly available. I draw your attention to the final document on that page containing the approved minutes of the meeting, and in particular the UC recommendations under Section 18 on pages 22-24, including some of particular relevance to our community:
* several recommendations concerning the proposed move to yearly call for proposals and subsequent introduction of a fast-track channel, including communicating example (including non-scientific e.g. parental leave) reasons for applying through fast-track, and considering the frequency and timing of the deadlines,
* a recommendation to continue to improve data reduction pipelines and documentation, including tutorial videos,
* a recommendation to monitor completion rates of normal and large programmes, and seek to improve them by increased communication about RA pressure and technical help where necessary.

ESO has since verbally responded to each of the recommendations by teleconference in November. That response is not public, but ESO considered all recommendations and I am pleased to report that, as usual, all are being acted upon.

Please feel welcome to contact me directly should you wish to provide further information to the UC about any ESO-relevant topics.

Best wishes,

Sarah

---

Dr Sarah Sweet (she/her)
Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics
ARC DECRA Fellow
School of Mathematics and Physics
University of Queensland
CRICOS 00025B • TEQSA PRV12080
Mobile: +61 402 089 803
sarahsweet.com.au<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/piPHC91WPRTYEQVnquOsXTqaoSI?domain=sarahsweet.com.au>
s.sweet at uq.edu.au<mailto:s.sweet at uq.edu.au>
sarah at sarahsweet.com.au<mailto:sarah at sarahsweet.com.au>

---
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/asa/attachments/20250226/0150964c/attachment.htm>