«Enhancing Community Skills»

Transcription

1 «Enhancing Community Skills» Opticon WP 13 (FP7-II program) Michel Dennefeld (IAP-Paris and University of Paris 6)) -Achievements during FP7 -Plans (improvement/development) for FP 2020

2 Objectives of Enhancement for FP7 Support to observing schools of various types with: More emphasis on life-long training (workshops) Better use of archives Organise more events in the East of Europe (e.g. data reduction schools, or «awareness» conferences) Organise instrumentation oriented schools/workshops Develop synergies Raise awareness to the great questions in astrophysics In close link with the Telescope Director s Forum

3 WP13 Steering Committee NEON core : M. Dennefeld (Fr), R. Gredel (D), H. Korhonen (DK), A. Pizzella (I) + Community representation: T. Bonev (BG), M. Stavinschi (Ro), L. Kiss (Hu), M. Ward (UK) ESO contact (difficult ) Link with the Telescope Director s Forum (J. Davies, or representative) Annual meeting (at EAS Jenam/EWASS or elsewhere)

4 The 2013 events: the LaPalma school 16 students, 14 nationalities (Albania, Croatia, Estonia, ) Use of the 2.5m INT and 2.5m NOT Good weather, high efficiency Scientific results: 2 IAU circulars (SN 2013 ed and 2013 ee), 1 ATel (flaring Blazar) and contribution to GRB A Board meeting, M. Dennefeld, Granada, Oct. 30, 2014

5 The 2013 Awareness Conf. in Bucharest 50 participants, 10 nationalities (Albania, Macedonia, Slovenia, ) Practical work on Virtual Observatory tools Lecture and practice on How to write a (good) telescope time request Excellent local organisation, but (CNRS) administrative difficulties Board meeting, M. Dennefeld, Granada, Oct. 30, 2014

6 The 2014 Rozhen observing school 20 students, 11 nationalities Use of the 2m, 1.2m Schmidt and 60cm Phot. Special emphasis on spectro-polarimetry and spectral classification Participate in mounting the spectrograph First previous Neon school student as a tutor! Poor weather did not allow Science Publ. (all SE Europe had poor weather, including OHP, Asiago, etc )

7 The 2014 Sofia Awareness Conference New questions in stellar astrophysics (H. Korhonen) Extra-solar planets (R. Ferlet) Formation and evolution of galaxies (S. Savaglio) Cosmology and Euclid (H. McCracken) What makes a galaxy active? (M. Ward) Observing tools, and the Opticon Access (M. Dennefeld) The astronomical VO (I. Iafrate) Telescope Time Proposal writing (M. Dennefeld), with practical work Presentations at the end

8 Lessons to be learned Hands-on experience unique Work in small groups essential Quality of tutors is the key for success Diversity of origins and nationalities favours interactions and future collaborations Regularity! Nobody should fall through the holes of the net...

9 Analysis for the future NEON schools have built up a good reputation, and the demand is high...so we have to continue... with regularity (yearly basis)! We have to avoid too heavy a program: VO tools are very interesting, and diverse, but demand a specific (long) training So the suggestion is to group VO tools with Awareness conferences only (to have some practical work there), and to do Proposal writing with Observing schools only (where the audience is more appropriate) BUT 2m class telescopes have to remain available with good instrumentation: implement a Network of telescopes to be used for training, with corresponding Matrix

10 Cost issues... Reminder: average cost of a NEON student CAHA: 2522; OHP: 2546; Asiago: 2363 (~45kE per school) La Palma: 3920; Awareness conference: ke depending on size (would be more efficient with many participants ) To do just Neon schools, once a year, is already around 200kE for 4 years... We need more than that to accomodate the other activities Actually, 350 ke for 4 years, is OK (4% of total) Today, manpower is more an issue than money

11 Timetable for FP7- II Type Observing schools LP BG Italy Yes Archive schools (Y) Y Training workshops Muse? AO KMOS on specific instruments +IFU Instrumentation (Y) Y Awareness Conf. Yes Yes No Y LaCaille exchange Scheme Y Y Y Y Board Meetings Y Y Y Y More would be possible if additionnal resources were available... IAU?? Possible school in Czech Rep. in 2015

12 Some concerns Lack of manpower: more tutors need to be hired How? Hard work for 2 weeks, no salaries! We need to convince (how?) senior astronomers that they have to invest in such tasks... The (CNRS only?) administrative burden is blocking the development of activities The LaCaille scheme is slow in taking up not due to lack of students, but lack of seniors! A bit more generosity would help.can a better advertisement help to solve the problem? Maybe the Opticon website should use less EU jargon (who knows that schools/exchange schemes are to be found under Networking??)

13 Availability of Observatories for training? The NEON core observatories can hardly host more than one school every 3-4 yrs. They need to have adequate instruments, and telescopes (specialisation plays against that!) (e.g. OHP, ) Some other observatories (not in Access) could help. Some are buying new telescopes (1.5m, etc ) We need to organise/coordinate them (hence the proposed Extended-TDF ) We could also have/add more remote-controlled telescopes (already NOT, Faulkes ) to fight adverse weather Add some small pieces of equipment (5 ke )? Use a small fraction of Opticon money for that? Incentive to design/built new instruments?

14 BELGIUM BULGARIA CZECH REPUBLIC DENMARK FINLAND FRANCE GERMANY GREECE HUNGARY ISRAEL ITALY NETHERLANDS POLAND PORTUGAL SPAIN SWEDEN UK USA How to adress this question?? Semesters 10B-12A 30 Proposals/PI's that received Time PI

15 Part of the answer We did add lectures about «How to write a proposal» in the last NEON schools And now we added also practical work! During last schools, the students had to write a proposal, which was evaluated! But reaches only ~20 students at a time Eastern EU countries ask for a training of that kind (repetitive request. ) Organise specific, short duration schools? Organise test refereeing before the actual deadlines? (to be discussed, with the CTAC?) Form needs to remain open all time! Boundary rules for selection?

16 Ideas for the future In addition to the present activities (teaching is a new start every academic year!!), develop also : Training in Observing techniques indispensable for the VLT and E-ELT (which is now on its way!): - AO ( e.g. photometry with AO ) - IFU (will become the standard tool ) (but we lack such tools on smaller telescopes ) E-ELT is not All in our domain it will keep only a small fraction of the community busy so we need also to develop the other facilities!! Use the Time domain set-up for training, with good science cases, on smaller telescopes (Surveys, Alerts)

17 Gaia-FUN-SSO (W. Thuillot et al.) Registered Not confimed In project 55 observing sites, mostly 0.6-1m telescopes, photometry With 6 Schmidt, 4 (small) Robotic, 2 remote-controlled We need the same for spectroscopy 17

18 Strengthen the efforts to integrate the EU communities You do not get a football player directly in the international team he needs to be trained locally first! So, do nt discourage the use /development of small telescopes locally! (compare Bulgaria/Romania ) Gaia Alerts follow-up (and other surveys) ideal tool to give small/ exciting research projects! Use this scheme to federate/coordinate these various observatories (enlarged, or specific TDF! ) (common tools?) You need to attract good students BEFORE they choose their PhD topic: Awareness conf s to include Master students, with local help (we use the Astronet contacts!)

19 Thank you for your attention! Questions?