Fifth IRAM mm-interferometry school IRAM Grenoble, 2-6 Oct. 2006

Transcription

1 Fifth IRAM mm-interferometry school IRAM Grenoble, 2-6 Oct. 2006

2 The present document reports on the fifth IRAM mm-interferometry school, which took place in the IRAM headquarters (Grenoble, France) on October 2-6, This event was supported by RadioNet. Purpose The school was intended for PhD students, post-docs and scientists who want to acquire a good knowledge of interferometry techniques and data reduction at millimeter wavelengths. This was the fifth IRAM mm-interferometry school, after those that were organized in 1998, 2000, 2002, and The main motivation for this series of schools is to increase the size of the community using the IRAM mm-inteferometer located on the Plateau de Bure, in the French Alps. This instrument is composed of six 15-m antennas and is currently the most sensitive interferometer operating in the millimeter domain. With its ability to detect cold gas and dust, and to study the movements of molecular matter, the Plateau de Bure provides key inputs for studies of star formation (e.g. circumstellar disk) or for observations of galaxies and quasars in the early universe. The performances of the Plateau de Bure interferometer are being upgraded, with new extended baselines (800 m instead of 400 m) being available since winter 2005/2006, providing angular resolution down to 0.3 at 1.3 mm wavelength. A new generation of receivers is being installed in October-December 2006, providing a gain in sensitivity that could ultimately be as good as a factor 5 for continuum observations at 1.3 mm. Further improvements of the interferometer are planned for the coming 2 years (new frequency bands, new wide-band correlator). Simultaneously, the construction of the ALMA instrument is making considerable progress. ALMA is 50-elements interferometer composed of 12-m antennas, built by an European-North American-Japanese consortium. In Europe, ESO is managing the project, with contributions from several institutes in Europe, including IRAM. The sensitivity and performances of ALMA will revolutionize several fields of research, making this instrument one of the most promising telescope currently under construction. Before ALMA becomes operational, it is therefore critical to form the community, and especially the young astronomers (PhD students, post-docs), to the millimeter interferometry techniques. In this context, IRAM is currently setting up a node of the European ALMA Regional Center (ARC), and the millimeter interferometry school series is obviously an important element of the effort devoted to user formation. Organization The school was organized by a LOC composed of members of the IRAM staff. The school program and agenda was discussed by a SOC composed of IRAM astronomers, including the Plateau de Bure Project Scientist, members of the IRAM users community, and the ALMA European Project scientist.

3 A web page was developed to host the information related to this school: This page now also contains links to the presentations shown during the school, and will remain active until the next IRAM school is organized. A poster was designed and sent to various astronomical institutes in the world. Program of the school The school included general presentations of the aperture synthesis techniques in the millimeter range, lectures focused on the Plateau de Bure operations and calibration, and an introduction to ALMA. The participants were encouraged to bring posters showing recent scientific results related to millimeter astronomy projects: these posters were presented during the whole week in the area outside the conference room, and could be read and discussed during the coffee breaks. The school program was split into the following sessions. All presentations shown during the week are available on-line at Session 1 Aperture Synthesis at mm Wavelengths General introduction to the millimeter astronomy techniques, aperture synthesis, interferometry, and the atmosphere properties in the millimeter/submillimeter wavelength domain. Session 2 Data Calibration Presentation of the Plateau de Bure operations and real-time calibration. General principles of the data calibration, including the atmospheric phase correction. Presentation of the Plateau de Bure calibration tools and pipeline. Session 3 Imaging and Data Analysis General principles of the imaging and deconvolution of the data. Implemention into the Plateau de Bure software. More detailed presentation of a few key aspects: data analysis in the image and UV plane, mosaicing, inclusion of the short-spacings, noise analysis. Session 4 Tutorials Two tutorials were organized, the first one on data calibration, the second one on imaging. Data obtained with the Plateau de Bure interferometer were distributed for that purpose. For practical reasons, two groups of students were formed: while one group was following a tutorial, the other could visit the IRAM labs (receivers, backend, SIS, mechanical workshop).

4 Session 5 Science with the Plateau de Bure Recent projects led by young astronomers were presented. Also, a more general lecture on how to use the Plateau de Bure in practice was given. Session 6 ALMA Presentation of the ALMA project, the ALMA regional support center (ARC), and the involvement of IRAM in the European ARC. Participants The number of participants was initially limited to 60. But ~85 requests for participations were received, making it necessary to setup a waiting list. It was not possible to accommodate that number of people, but we finally decided to accept 70 participants (whose name and affiliations are given in the Annex 3). One third of the participants (23/70) were women. The repartition per country is given in the table below: the attendance was definitely not restricted to the IRAM-funding countries (France, Germany, Spain) but was world-wide. As expected, most of the participants were PhD students and post-docs. Country Nb.participants Germany 16 France 9 Italy 8 Spain 5 United Kingdom 3 Sweden 3 Netherlands 3 Rest of Europe (1) 10 Outside Europe (2) 8 IRAM 5 Total 70 (1) Austria, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Poland, Switzerland (2) Austalia, Chile, India, Mexico, USA

5 Poll At the end the school, a poll was organized to try to obtain some feedback from the participants. A form was distributed on which everyone was asked to note from 1 (bad) to 10 (excellent) various aspects of the school (see below). These forms were collected in a basket, so that anonymous answers were guaranteed. Of course, individual comments were also collected, but are not reported here. Question Average note Quality of the lectures 8 Planning of the activities 7 Hotel accommodation 7 Ambiance 8 General organization 8 Notes are from 1 (bad) to 10 (excellent). Next school Given the considerable effort that is currently devoted to the development of the Plateau de Bure and to the construction of ALMA, the formation of the community to the interferometry techniques and data reduction at millimeter wavelengths is and will remain in the coming years a priority. IRAM will therefore organize a new millimeterinterferometry school in the summer/autumn We will consider to which extend the format of the school may evolve, with e.g. a visit to the Plateau de Bure and a longer and more practical session on the ALMA instrument (software demonstration, etc). This may require increasing the duration of the school from one week to e.g. 10 days.

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7 Annex I School Program Sunday, Oct. 1st 18:00 Welcome reception at the Splendid Hotel Monday, Oct. 2 09:00 Welcome address (P. Cox) Session 1 Aperture Synthesis at mm Wavelengths 09:15 Introduction to mm astronomy (M.Guelin) 10:15 Coffee break 10:45 mm antennas and their calibration (P. Hily-Blant) 11:45 Lunch break 13:45 Interferometry and aperture synthesis (J. Pety) 14:45 Coffee break 15:15 The mm-wave interferometer (R. Lucas) 16:45 Short break 17:00 The atmosphere at mm wavelengths (J.-M. Winters) 18:00 Session closing Tuesday, Oct. 3 Session 2 Data Calibration 09:00 The Plateau de Bure interferometer (R. Neri) 10:30 Coffee break 11:00 Atmospheric phase correction (A.Karastergiou) 12:00 Lunch break 14:00 Data calibration principles (R. Lucas) 15:30 Coffee break 16:00 PdBI data calibration in practice (F. Gueth) 17:30 Session closing Wednesday, Oct. 4 Session 3 Imaging & Data Analysis 09:00 Standard imaging & deconvolution - part I (J. Pety) 10:00 Coffee break 10:30 Standard imaging & deconvolution - part II (J. Pety)

8 11:30 Lunch break 14:00 Data analysis in the UV plane (A.Castro-Carrizo) 15:00 Coffee break 15:30 Large-scale mapping (F. Gueth) 16:30 Session closing Thursday, Oct. 5 Session 4 Tutorials 09:00 Calibration tutorial (class A) 11:00 Calibration tutorial (class B) 13:00 Lunch break 14:00 Imaging tutorial (class A), labs visit (class B) 15:30 Imaging tutorial (class B), labs visit (class A) 17:00 Session closing 19:30 Conference dinner Friday, Oct. 6 Session 5 Science with the Plateau de Bure Interferometer 09:00 Sensitivity & noise (S.Guilloteau) 10:00 Presentation of selected recent PdBI projects 11:00 Coffee break 11:30 Using the Plateau de Bure interferometer (R. Neri) 12:30 Lunch break Session 6 ALMA 14:00 The ALMA project (R.Laing) 15:30 Coffee break 16:00 The ALMA Regional Center (P.Andreani) 17:00 The ARC node at IRAM (F.Gueth) 18:00 End of School

9 Annex 2 Organizing committees Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC) Rafael Bachiller (OAN, Madrid, Spain) Pierre Cox (IRAM Grenoble, France) Phil Diamond (Univ. Manchester, UK) Frédéric Gueth (IRAM, France) - chairman Stéphane Guilloteau (Obs. Bordeaux, France) Roberto Neri (IRAM Grenoble, France) Linda Tacconi (MPE Munich, Germany) Tom Wilson (ESO/ALMA Munich, Germany) Local Organizing Committee (LOC) Cathy Berjaud Michael Bremer Frédéric Gueth (chairman) Aris Karastergiou

10 Annex 3 List of participants AKYILMAZ Meltem ALONSO Tomas AMO BALADRON Aranzazu ARAVENA AGUIRRE Manuel BARDEAU Sébastien BASU Kaustuv BEELEN Alexandre BERTOLDI Franck BIGIEL Frank BRAND Jan BURTON Michael BUSQUET Gemma CANDOTTI Massimo CASASOLA Viviana CAVALIE Thibault CHAPILLON Edwige CHEN Xuepeng CHESNEAU Olivier CROCKER Alison CURTIS Emily DESSAUGES-ZAVADSKY Miroslava DI FOLCO Emmanuel FALLSCHEER Cassie FALONY Sarah FERRARI Chiara GARCIA-APPADOO Diego GARDAN Erwan GIROLETTI Marcello GRAPS Amara HAAN Sebastian HERNANDEZ-UTRERA Oscar HILL Tracey HITSCHFELD Marc Department of Physics, Durham - UK OAN, Alcala de Henares - Spain CSIC, DAMIR, IEM, Madrid - Spain RAIUB, Bonn - Germany Observatoire de Bordeaux - France MPIfR, Bonn - Germany RAIUB, Bonn - Germany RAIUB, Bonn - Germany MPI für Astronomy, Heidelberg - Germany INAF, Bologna - Italy University of New South Wales - Australia Universita de Barcelona - Spain National University of Ireland - Ireland Universita di Padova Italy Observatoire de Bordeaux France IRAM Grenoble France MPIA, Heidelberg - Germany Observatoire de la Côte d'azur France Oxford University UK University of Cambridge, Cambridge - UK Geneva Observatory Switzerland Observatoire de Genève Switzerland Wesleyan University USA Universiteit Gent Belgium Institut fuer Astrophysik, Innsbruck - Austria Institut fuer Astronomy, Bonn - Germany Observatoire de Bordeaux France INAF, Firenze Italy IFSI, Roma Italy MPI für Astronomy, Heidelberg - Germany LAOG, Grenoble - France Leiden University The Netherlands Universität zu Köln - Germany

11 HOVATTA Talvikki JAKOB Holger JOHANSSON Daniel KAMBLE Atish KAMINSKI Tomasz KURLANDCZYK Herve LIBERT Yannick LOMMEN Dave LONGMORE Steve LOPEZ-SANCHEZ Angel MACK Karl-Heinz MAERCKER Matthias MARSEILLE Matthieu MARTINES I BADENES Vicent MEYER Veronika MOULLET Arielle NAKAZATO Takeschi NIEPPOLA Elina NORD Martin OCANA FLAQUER Breezy PANIC Olja POMPEI Emmanuela PRANDONI Isabella PULECKA Marta RAGAN Sarah RAMSTEDT Sofia REYNIER Emmanuel RODON Javier Adrian RODRIGUEZ Nemessio SCHAAF Reinhold SCHULLER Frederic TARTARI Andrea VIDAL PEREZ Edgardo VLAHAKIS Catherine WAGG Jeff Metsahovi Radio Observatory - Finland Universität zu Köln - Germany Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala - Sweden Raman Institute, Bangalore - India Nicolaus Copernicus Center, Torun - Poland ESO (Alma division), Garching Germany LERMA, Observatoire de Paris - France Sterrewacht Leiden - The Netherlands University of New South Wales, Sydney - Australia IAC - Spain INAF, Istituto di Radioastronomia Bologna - Italy Stockholm Observatory - Sweden Observatoire de Bordeaux - France Universitat de Valencia Spain MPIfR, Bonn Germany LESIA, Obs. de Paris - France IRAM Grenoble Metsähovi Radio Observatory - Finland MPIfR Bonn Germany IRAM Granada Leiden Observatory - The Netherlands ESO, Santiago Chile IRA, INAF, Bologna - Italy CAMK, Torun Poland University of Michigan - USA Stockholm Observatory - Sweden IRAM Grenoble MPIA, Heidelberg - Germany IRAM Grenoble RAIUB, Bonn Germany MPIfR Bonn Germany University of Milano-Bicocca - Italy Ghent University - Belgium AIfA, Univ. Bonn - Germany INAOE - Mexico

12 ZANICHELLI Alessandra INAF, Bologna Italy

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