Found 111 talks archived in Telescopes and instrumentation

TBD

The precipitable water vapour (PWV) is the main absorber in the Earth's
atmosphere at infrared (IR) and microwave wavelengths. In the last years,
the IAC Sky team has been providing real-time PWV data from a monitor based
on the GNSS (GPS) technique (GNSS PWV Monitors; GPM). Among other things,
the PWV values help in the scheduling of the telescopes with IR
instrumentation. The GPM have undergone a continuous process of upgrading.
More recently, we have undertaken the PWV forecasting. We will present in
the talk a brief summary of the monitors and details of ForO ("Forecasting
the Observatories"), the forecasting system for PWV at the Observatories.
ForO is based on a mesoscale Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model. The
ForO system has been validated and calibrated with PWV data from the GPM
and will deliver accurate PWV daily predictions for ORM and OT on a 24, 48
and 72 hours windows. This is a definitive improvement to optimize the
flexible scheduling for IR observations, in particular for CanaryCAM and
EMIR at the GTC.

ALMA is a submillimetre/millimetre telescope located at 5000m in the Atacama desert in Chile designed to observe at 0.32–9.5 mm (31–950 GHz), and it is expected to be the leading observatory in these wavelengths for many decades to come. ALMA has performed scientific observations since September 2011, with new capabilities being offered for each new observing cycle. The interface between ALMA and the astronomical community is provided by the ALMA Regional Centres (ARCs). The European ARC is located at ESO, Garching. In Europe, the services to the community are provided by a distributed network of ARC nodes. The European ARC network is an international, geographically dispersed structure, and consists of the central ARC at ESO, seven ARC nodes and one Centre of Expertise, distributed across Europe. It is an organised effort to provide the European ALMA user community with uniform expert support from the stage of proposal preparation through to data reduction, in order to enable the optimal usage and increase the scientific output of ALMA. The model for the European ARC nodes network will be described in terms of its organisation, communication strategies and user support. ALMA capabilities and recent ALMA results will also be summarised.
Depending on the interest of the participants, the talk can be followed by a small demo of the ALMA Observing Tool (OT) for the creation and submission of ALMA proposals, as well as the ALMA Snooping Project Interface (SnooPI), that allows PIs and Co-Is to follow their projects throughout their life-cycle.

The IAC is part of the  Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA), a consortium of colleges and universities in the US partnered with Lowell Observatory, the Chilean National Telescope Allocation Committee, and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias.

In this seminar I will describe the remote facilities operated by the SARA observatories that comprise a 0.96m telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona; a 0.6m instrument on Cerro Tololo, Chile; and the 1m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope at the ORM. All are operated using standard VNC or Radmin protocols communicating with on-site PCs. Remote operation offers considerable flexibility in scheduling, allowing long-term observational cadences difficult to achieve with classical observing at remote facilities. Multiple observers at different locations can share a telescope for training, educational use, or collaborative research programs. Each telescope has a CCD system for optical imaging, using thermoelectric cooling to avoid the need for frequent local service, and a second CCD for offset guiding. SARA Kitt Peak telescope also has a fiber-fed echelle spectrograph. Switching between imaging and spectroscopy is very rapid, so a night can easily accommodate mixed observing modes.

The IAC astronomers started to use SARA facilities since early 2016 and a new call for proposals is open. I will present some early results from IAC’s observational programs and discuss the present status of the facilities and the experience obtained by the IAC users that could help new potential observers to prepare their own proposals.

An exciting series of changes are taking place at the venerable WHT and INT on La Palma. WEAVE, the next generation multi-fibre spectrograph is being completed for the WHT prime focus. Once built, it will carry out massive surveys of stars, the Milky Way, galaxy evolution and cosmology. At the INT, the HARPS3 high-resolution stabilized spectrograph is being built. It will provide the ING communities with a world-class exoplanet research tool. This talk will address the observing opportunities brought by these two instruments, their development calendars, and ING’s plans to retain additional instrumentation for the open time. I will describe how the telescopes will be operated, both in the survey time and the open, TAC time.

In coincidence with the announcement of the call for proposal of the Spanish night CAT for semester 2017A, we present the new web page OOCC. This is the new astronomer portal of the IAC, and it targets the Spanish community with all the necessary information to access and observe with any telescope at both Observatorios Astronomicos de Canarias, that is the Observatorio del Teide and the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos. The new portal, developed by the IAC Telescope Operation Group in agreement with the Presidents of both the night and the solar CATs, supersedes the old www.iac.es/cat and www.iac.es/telescopes pages. In this talk we will present the most important aspects and possibilities of the portal.

I will summarize the two well proved techniques for high spatial resolution: Lucky Imaging and Adaptive Optics and the work of our group in this field. I will also introduce the state-of-the-art new instrument Adaptive Optics Lucky Imager (AOLI). On AOLI, both techniques merge providing a very versatile answer on the visible range. Some first science on the T-Tauri system LkHa 262/263 in the MBM 12 cloud will be reported together with a review of the next steps to be developed.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project intends to build a radio-interferometer with 1-sq-km collecting area, and thousands of antennas with baselines up to 3000 km, to be hosted in two continents (Africa and Oceania). This will provide tens of times more sensitivity and allow astronomers to survey the entire sky thousands of times faster than any system currently in existence, with the ability to image huge areas of sky in parallel.

Spain is actively participating in the SKA detailed design phase, both at a scientific and technological level. The potential of SKA for fundamental breakthroughs in Astrophysics, Physics, and Astrobiology has made that the Spanish SKA White Book has been published, with more than 125 authors who have summarized in 29 chapters the interest of the Spanish scientific community. At the same time, SKA constitutes a technology tractor for high-impact societal areas. Among the 100 companies and research institutions across 20 countries that are contributing to SKA design, 10 Spanish research centres and 11 companies participate in several work packages (Dishes, Signal & Data Transport, Central Signal Processor, Science Data Processor, Telescope Manager, and Infrastructure). This Spanish technological participation in the SKA, with an estimated financial value of ~€2M, has been officially acknowledged by the SKA Board. Since October 2013 a representative of the Spanish government has been regularly invited to participate in the SKA Board meetings. Furthermore, at the beginning of 2014, the Board of the Spanish Astronomy Infrastructures Network endorsed the recommendation issued by the Radio Astronomy Infrastructures working group on the interest of the scientific community and industry that Spain explores the possibility to join the SKA project as Full Memb er before the construction phase starts. The interest of the Spanish community and industry was restated during the SKA Spanish day held in October 2014 while a new SKA Spanish Industry Day will be organized by CDTI in 2016.

The aim of this talk is providing a retrospective view of the Spanish participation in SKA project and explain the current status of its participation and opportunities of involvement.

In this talk we will review  the SPICA mission and present its current status under the new framework. Optimized for mid- and far-infrared astronomy with a cryogenically cooled ~2.5m telescope, SPICA will achieve high spatial resolution and unprecedented sensitivity in this wavelength domain. It will enable to address fundamental problems in astrophysics ranging from the formation of planets to the star-formation history of the universe.