Save the Date: NOAO Events at the January AAS Meeting

US National Gemini Office Workshop on Adaptive Optics

Wednesday, 6 January 2016 at 2:00 - 3:30 pm in St. George 114 at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center.

The US National Gemini Office will offer a mini-workshop on “Adaptive Optics: from planning observations through data reduction”. This second-in-a-series workshop is aimed at community members who are interested in or currently carrying out AO observations on 4-m to 8-m class telescopes. The workshop will start with a presentation on the fundamentals of AO by Dr. Claire Max (University of California, Santa Cruz), with a focus on data taking and reduction. Presentations by Dr. Tim Davidge (Herzberg Inst. of Astrophysics) and Dr. Franck Marchis (SETI) will feature results from AO science. The speakers will address the observational setup and data reduction challenges of working with AO data, how these were resolved, and lessons learned. Audience interaction is encouraged.

NOAO Transformed: A Status Report (a.k.a. NOAO Town Hall)

Wednesday 6 January 6:30 - 7:30 pm (Note: Time and Date change)

NOAO is deploying a new suite of research capabilities for the community-at-large in partnership with NSF, DOE, NASA, and various major science collaborations. Instrumentation capabilities available now include the ultra-wide field optical imager DECam as well as new optical and infrared medium-resolution spectrometers. Capabilities available in the near future include the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), an ultra-wide-field, 5000-fiber optical spectrometer destined for the Mayall telescope, and the Extreme Precision Doppler Spectrometer (EPDS) for the WIYN telescope. Wide-field optical surveys with DECam in the South and Mosaic 3 in the North are delivering major new data products to the NOAO Science Archive for community use. In support of those new data products, NOAO is developing catalog exploration, exploitation, and visualization tools within the Data Lab project. Meanwhile, NOAO remains active as the US Gateway to Gemini and its recently improved instrument suite. NOAO may also be poised to act as the US OIR System coordinator. Join us for a presentation by the NOAO Director. There will be ample opportunity for community discussion.

TMT Open House

Wednesday 6 January 5:30 - 6:30 pm

With an order of magnitude more collecting area than today’s 8-10m telescopes, and nearly 5 times better angular resolution than JWST at similar infrared wavelengths, the Thirty Meter Telescope will make fundamental contributions to most areas of astronomy and astrophysics, from planetary systems (in and out of our own solar system) to galaxy formation and cosmology. This Open House will describe the status of TMT, highlighting new developments in instrumentation, adaptive optics, and science planning. Michael Bolte (UC Santa Cruz) will present the latest news about the project and the TMT partnership. Mark Dickinson (NOAO) will discuss US community liaison activities being carried out as part of a cooperative agreement with the NSF to develop a model for possible US national participation in TMT. Members of the US TMT Science Working Group (SWG) will attend the Open House, and there will be ample time for questions and discussion. Complimentary refreshments and hors d’oeuvres will be served.

TMT Thermal IR Science & Instrumentation Workshop

Thursday 7 January 5:30-7:30 pm

This workshop will discuss concepts and science cases for a thermal-infrared instrument for TMT, focused on imaging and low- and high-resolution (up to R = 120,000) spectroscopy. In preparation for an anticipated call for proposals for TMT second generation instrumentation, a group of scientists based mostly in the USA and Japan have been studying an instrument concept optimized to operate at approximately 7.5 to 25 microns, and are now exploring additional science cases made possible by changing the optimization to the 3 to 14 micron range [see summary sheet (.docx file) for details]. This AAS workshop aims to engage US and Canadian astronomers in this process, and will focus on the development of science cases that will help guide the technical drivers for such an instrument. There will be presentations about TMT second-generation instrumentation planning in general, specific thermal-infrared instrument concepts, science drivers ranging from disks and young stellar objects to exoplanets to AGN, and scientific and operational synergies with JWST. If you are interested in giving a presentation at the workshop, please contact Chris Packham (UT San Antonio; Chris.Packham@utsa.edu).