GES 2014: Gaia-Eso Survey Second Science Meeting

The Gaia-ESO Survey (GES) is currently half way to achieve its goal to collect spectra for 100 000 stars over a period of five years. The survey is providing an homogeneous overview of the distributions of kinematics and elemental abundances for the major components of the Milky Way, namely the bulge, the thick and the thin discs and the halo. In addition to the field component, a very significant sample of open star clusters, covering all accessible cluster ages and stellar masses, as well as a handful of globular clusters are being observed.

ESLAB 2013: The Universe as seen by Planck

The objective of the conference is to present and discuss the initial science results from Planck, ESA’s mission to map the anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background. It is the first scientific forum where these results will be addressed, following Planck’s first major release of data products and scientific papers in early 2013. It will cover both cosmology (based on analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background) and astrophysics (based on analysis of foreground emission sources). The Planck satellite was launched on 14 May 2009, and has been surveying the sky continuously since August 2009. The nominal duration of the mission was completed in November of 2010, but Planck still continues to gather data. Data processing has been progressing and a first set of cosmological-grade data products will be released to the astronomical community in early 2013. These products will consist mainly of temperature maps of the whole sky at nine frequencies between 30 GHz and 857 GHz, which allow us to extract a map of the temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background, as well as maps of many astrophysical foregrounds. The latter most importantly include synchrotron, free-free and dust emission from the Milky Way, radio and far-infrared emission from external galaxies, the characteristic signatures due to the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect in clusters of galaxies, and the Cosmic Infrared Background. The Planck data therefore provide for an extremely broad range of cosmological and astrophysical science.

More info: ESLAB 2013

The Next Generation CFHT: A 10m, Wide-Field, Spectroscopic Telescope for the Coming Decade

For over 30 years the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and its international community have developed innovative capabilities to support advanced research. CFHT was among the first on Mauna Kea to develop a facility class adaptive optics system, multi-object and integral field spectrographs, and wide field panoramic imagers. Today we look to a future that builds upon our past, including the possibility of replacing the current 3.6 m telescope with a 10 m facility dedicated to wide field spectroscopy. If pursued, the next-generation CFHT (ngCFHT) would re-use the existing facility except for the telescope and dome, which would be replaced. While this concept is in infancy from a technical development perspective, considerable work has been completed in defining the science objectives for such a facility and we look forward to hosting members of the international astronomy community in Hawaii to discuss ngCFHT.

More information on ngCFHT is available at: The Next Generation CFHT, A Study