CTIO’s 50th Anniversary Conference on “Fifty Years of Wide Field Studies in the Southern Hemisphere”

The advent of wide-field CCD cameras on 4-m class telescopes, which enabled surveys of the sky to significant depths, has led to new perspectives on the formation of our Galaxy. In particular, the selection of the Cerro Tololo site in November 1962, enabled a mapping of the, until then, relatively inaccessible Southern skies.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of NOAO in the South, NOAO will host in La Serena, Chile on 6-9 May 2013 a conference on resolved stellar populations of the Milky Way bulge, the Galactic Halo, and the Magellanic Clouds. The conference will cover existing observations from large-scale surveys, new surveys in development, and diverse strategies that can place innovative constraints on Galaxy formation models. The conference will also highlight new capabilities, such as the wide-field camera DECam, and how to use these efficiently in the era of “big data” science.

CTIO’s impact on astronomy has far surpassed its original mission to provide world-class facilities for observations of the southern sky. The celebratory meeting will be an opportunity to share not only science, but also stories and memories of the many events and exceptional characters that have helped shape CTIO. Invited talks will therefore address the scientific as well as cultural history of CTIO. The program will include:

• The Stellar Population of the Galactic Bulge
• Chemical Abundances in the Galactic Bulge
• Galactic Clusters in the Galactic Bulge
• Modeling the Formation of the Galactic Bulge
• Old Stellar Populations of the Magellanic Clouds
• Young Stellar Objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Variable Stars in the Magellanic Clouds and Galactic Center
• Star formation and the IMF in the Magellanic Clouds
• CTIO Science Highlights

Please register for the meeting at the conference website where further information on the conference is also available. The registration deadline is 1 April 2013.

Questions for the conference organizers, Andrea Kunder and Sean Points (NOAO), are welcome at ctio50loc@ctio.noao.edu.