Recent developments of the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF) project and the use of a laser comb for improved wavelength calibration have been announced.
The 4 Laser Guide Star Facility (4LGSF) achieved first light with the first of the laser guide star units on VLT UT4; see Announcement. The components of the AOF will be installed later this year and commissioned in 2015 and 2016.
The laser frequency comb installed on HARPS has completed an intense first commissioning phase. A velocity precision of better than 5 cm s-1 was obtained on a single laser comb exposure, improving to better than 2 cm s-1 on combining exposures. See Announcement for more details.
The submission of proposals for the ALMA Early Science Cycle 3 closed on 23 April 2015. The entire process went smoothly and without any problems. The number of proposals reached the record number of 1582 for a total of 9037 hours of 12-m array time; a total of ~2100 hours is available for observations. This compares to a total of 1382 proposals in Cycle 2. The fraction of proposals from European PIs was 42%. More details of the submission statistics are available.
The submillimetre wide field bolometer camera ArTéMiS was successfully re-commissionned in July 2014 on APEX. ArTéMiS data can now be reduced using the BoA package. Dedicated ArTéMiS data reduction scripts are now available and the required receiver parameter files. Alternative data reduction scrips in IDL will be released in the near future.
The Archive Science group has now published a user guide providing a description of the reduced data products that can be browsed and downloaded from the dedicated Phase 3 query forms of the Science Archive Facility. The user guide contains an overview of the data types, a description of their reduction/calibration levels and instructions on how to browse and access these products.
All spectra obtained with the FLAMES/GIRAFFE spectrograph in the multi-object (MEDUSA) mode, from June 2005 until December 2014, are now published via the Science Archive as reduced data. The extracted, wavelength calibrated, one-dimensional spectra are in tabular FITS format, using the science data products standard.
ESO's recommended environment to run data reduction pipelines ESO Reflex is now much easier to install on Apple computers. Under Apple Mac OS X 10.9 or newer, a substantially simplified installation procedure using MacPorts is now available. This procedure should resolve most of the installation problems users experienced in the past.
Understanding the formation and evolution of galaxy groups is crucial to solving the general problem of galaxy formation, as groups contain most of the galaxies in the Universe at the present time and galaxies spend most of their life in groups before eventually entering the cluster environment. The main aims of the workshop are to review the multi-wavelenth properties of galaxy groups, probe the properties of the hot intra-group gas (primarily from X-ray data), consider the galaxy population properties from optical to far-infrared wavelengths to the radio and review the current theoretical picture of group and galaxy formation and evolution. Further information can be obtained from the workshop website.
This workshop will explore some of the first science that will emerge from the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in the next decade. The primary spectroscopic capability of E-ELT at first light will be provided by the HARMONI instrument, a visible and near-infrared integral field spectrograph.The meeting will bring together experts spanning a wide range of observational fields, from exo-planets to cosmology, to plan for future observations with HARMONI. More details on the workshop webpage.
Mass loss from cool Asymptotic Giant Branch and Red Supergiant stars inputs large amounts of material to the ISM and is an important process for understanding stellar lifecycles and galactic ecology. Significant advances in observations (e.g. VLTI and ALMA), and theory, provide an opportunity to revisit outstanding questions of late stellar evolution, such as the role of mass loss, magnetic fields and binarity. The meeting aims to bring together observers and theorists from the low and high mass stellar communities to explore the commonalities of evolved star mass loss. Further information can be obtained from the workshop website.
The conference will cover both theory and observations of the large-scale structure of the Universe to discuss recent progress and future directions. Measuring the distribution of matter in the Universe as a function of time and space is a powerful probe of cosmology, both for gravity on scales much greater than the conventional tests of General Relativity and the origin of cosmic acceleration. Observations of the large-scale structure of the Universe, from a new generation of surveys are pushing the survey volume and redshifts, demanding improved theoretical understanding. More details can be found on the conference webpage.
The 6th European Radio Interferometry School (ERIS), sponsored by the European Union, RadioNet3 and ESO is sponsoring a 5-day school of lectures and tutorials focussed on obtaining scientific results from radio interferometry at metre to sub-mm wavelengths. Topics include: fundamentals of radio interferometry; calibration; deconvolution and self-calibration; and information extraction from data cubes. The techniques are applicable to low-frequency, cm-wave, mm-wave and VLBI. The School is primarily intended for graduate students and beginning post-docs, but more senior researchers interested in learning about the techniques are also welcome to attend. Full details can be found here, but capacity has been reached.
Optical/infrared long-baseline interferometry has reached a new stage with the advent of multi-telescope arrays accessible to a broad community of astronomers, most notably VLTI. In preparation for the second generation VLTI instruments, GRAVITY and MATISSE, the summer school aims to train astronomers in the best possible exploitation of these instruments for a broad range of science topics. The prime objective is to initiate astronomers to the use of VLTI by: showcasing some applications in the field of young stellar objects, evolved stars and AGN; teaching the fundamentals of optical interferometry; and practical sessions with software tools. The school is addressed to undergraduate and PhD students, postdocs and astronomers willing to exploit long-baseline interferometry. More details on the webpage; registration deadline is 30 June 2015.
The workshop will consider the science from current and upcoming multi-object spectroscopy (MOS) facilities, with a focus on the important cases already limited by sensitivity and spatial resolution. The scientific topics that demand future MOS capabilities on ELTs will be reviewed. The workshop will be organized in sessions on science themes from planetary systems and stellar populations to the earliest phases of galaxy formation. There will be a special session dedicated to critical analysis of the ELT MOS facilities required in the post-JWST era to assess their complementarity and competitiveness. More details can be found on the website.
Astrobiology and Planetary Atmospheres Joint ESO, Universidad de Chile, Universidad Andrés Bello Workshop, Vitacura, Santiago, Chile, 28 September – 02 October 2015
Astrobiology has become the meeting point for astronomers, biologists, geologists, and climatologists in trying to solve the puzzle of how life originated in the Universe. The main aims of the workshop are to foster exchanges across all the major disciplines involved in the field of astrobiology, particularly those working on climatology of Solar System planets. More details can be found on the workshop webpage or by email. Abstract deadline is end June and registration deadline 1 September.
ESO Public Surveys have increased in size and number and now vastly increase the volume of public data delivered. Also about 15% of VLT science time has been allocated to Large Programmes. This workshop will focus on the scientific results achieved and the potential for enhanced exploitation of the archival data from these programmes. Presentations from all the Public Surveys and a representative set of the Large Programmes completed since the last Large Programme workshop in 2008 will be scheduled. Full details can be found on the workshop website. The abstract submission deadline is 30 June 2015 and registration deadline 7 September 2015.
The objective of this workshop is to prepare that part of the community interested in Solar System research for making the best use of the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs). In complement to many successful space planetary missions, ground-based observations are still essential for understanding the physico-chemical properties of Solar System, A second objective will be to review the specific constraints raised by Solar System observations with the E-ELT. More details can be found on the workshop webpage. The abstract deadline is 01 June 2015 and registration deadline 31 October 2015.
