How To Visit The Moon

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1 Section des Unités de recherche Report from the visiting committee Research unit : Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg UMR 7550 University Louis Pasteur February 2008

2 Section des Unités de recherche Report from the visiting committee Research unit : Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg UMR 7550 University Louis Pasteur february 2008

3 Report from the visiting committee The research unit : Name of the research unit : Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg Requested label : UMR N in case of renewal : 7550 Head of the research unit : Mr Olivier BIENAYMÉ University or school : University Louis Pasteur Strasbourg 1 Other institutions and research organization: CNRS (INSU) Date(s) of the visit : February, 11 th and 12 th of

4 Members of the visiting committee Chairman of the commitee : Mr PUGET J-L., Institut d Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay Other committee members : Mrs ARNAUD Monique, CEA, Saclay Mr BLANPAIN Cyrille, CEREGE, Aix-en-Provence Mr HENNING Thomas, MPIfA, Heidelberg, Allemagne Mr MAÎTRE Henri, GET, Telecom Paris Mr MIGNARD François, Observatoire de la Côte d Azur, Nice Mr PETROFF Yves, ESRF, Grenoble Mr GILMORE Gerard, Cambridge University, Grande-Bretagne CNU, CoNRS, CSS INSERM, (représentant INRA, INRIA, IRD ) representatives : Mr BALLET Jean, représentant la section 17 du CoNRS Mr SAUTY Christophe, représentant la section 34 du CNU Mr ROUAN Daniel, représentant le CNAP Observers AERES scientific representative: Mrs FALGARONE Edith University or school representative: Mr SCHMITTBUHL Jean, ULP Research organization representative (s) : Mr CASTETS Alain, représentant le CNRS (INSU) 3

5 Report from the visiting committee 1 Short presentation of the research unit Effectif : 23 chercheurs et enseignants-chercheurs (6 chercheurs permanents CNRS, 6 enseignants chercheurs, 11 astronomes du cadre des Observatoires en science de l Univers), 11 doctorants, 2 postdocs, 2 PAST, 26 techniciens et administratifs (11 MEN, 15 CNRS, 6 payés sur contrats) Nombre de HDR, nombre de HDR encadrant des thèses : 19 HDR dont 7 encadrant Nombre de thèses soutenues et durée moyenne lors des 4 dernières années, nombre de thèses en cours, taux d abandon, nombre de thésards financés (détailler selon le type de financement) ; 13 thèses mi 2003-mi2007 (3 par an en moyenne), pas d abandon, Nombre de thèse en cours 9 (7 sur contrat MEN, 2 en cotutelles avec l Italie et le Luxembourg) Nombre de membres bénéficiant d une PEDR : 2 cette année Nombre de publiants : 22/23. Un seul chercheur n a pas publié. Cette personne publie dans des revues sans comité de lecture pour des raisons identifiées. L Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg a eu 9 ou 10 publications parmi les 5% les plus citées pendant 4 années entre 2003 et Les 4 articles les plus cités sont dans le meilleur pour cent et il faut noter que le responsable de l équipe galaxies a 4300 citations. 2 Preparation and execution of the visit Date(s) de la Visite : February :00 Committee welcome 9:15 Introduction by AERES delegate Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES, tout ou partie de l unité 9:30 Meeting of the committee to agree on procedures and schedule 10:30 Meeting with Observatory Director Présentation of report on activities in the past 4 years and future plans, discussion Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES et/ou tout ou partie de l unité 11:30 Meeting with Scientific team: High energy presentation, discussion Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES, tout ou partie de l unité 14:00 Meeting with Scientific team: CDS Centre de Données de Strasbourg presentation, discussion Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES, tout ou partie de l unité 15:00 Meeting with Scientific team: Galaxies presentation, discussion Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES, tout ou partie de l unité 16:00 Observation services: CDS, SSC-XMM Newton presentatios, discussions Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES, tout ou partie de l unité 4

6 Tuesday 9:00 Meetings with Conseil de laboratoire, PhD students, delegates of technical staff Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES, sans la direction de l unité et sans les responsables d équipe Tuesday 10:00 Visit of laboratories Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES, tout ou partie de l unité Tuesday 14:00 Committee meeting in close session Présence : membres du Comité, avec ou sans les représentants des tutelles et/ou du délégué AERES selon les souhaits du Président du comité (la norme souhaitée par l AERES est plutôt avec le délégué AERES (mais il ne participe pas à la discussion) et sans les tutelles) 16:00 Summary of conclusions Présence : membres du Comité, représentants des tutelles, délégué AERES et/ou tout ou partie de l unité End 16:30 3 Overall appreciation of the activity of the research unit, of its links with local, national and international partners The Strasbourg Observatory is one of the small French observatories which needed to grow to maintain quality. It has seen that development over the last 15 years, doubling its academic positions and its technical-administrative staff. Inevitably in rapid change some people came and left; nevertheless the observatory kept its appeal and is still growing. It has now reached critical mass. This success deserves to be consolidated by consistent support from the funding authorities. The laboratory has high-quality research teams, with international involvement and recognition (see the next section), but the key element of its success is the Strasbourg Data Center (CDS). One of the most powerful developments in modern astronomy involves testing the likelihoods of theories and models using large, well-quantified systematic surveys, whose random and systematic errors are known. In parallel the broadening of the electromagnetic spectrum available to astronomers from TeV gamma rays (and very recently ev cosmic rays!) to centimeter radio data make the question of identification of astronomical «objects or sources» an essential but very difficult task. This is due to the very different angular resolutions and densities of sources on the sky radiating the bulk of the energy at a given frequency, which can vary by factors larger than The CDS is at the forefront in providing the tools and data access needed for these kinds of developments. The CDS has earned a worldwide reputation based on its ability to create portals that are extremely effective in making astronomical data available. The directors of the CDS deserve credit for the wise policy decision, made at the very beginning, to place practical applications for astronomy at the heart of the project, and to hold true to this decision each time competing technical solutions were needed. This does not imply a lack of imagination. The CDS has become a singular example of a system that has combined robust operational technology and advanced experimentation at a level that is often pioneering, even within the world of computer science. It was linguistic analysis applied to SIMBAD which naturally led to the semantic representations of concepts and the definition of ontologies. Likewise, the use of multi-spectral or hyper-spectral images has made it possible to carry out, in collaborative programmes with the LSIIT (Laboratoire des Sciences de l Image, de l informatique et de la télédétection), highly original studies in image processing: Markov analyses, methods of fusion, multi-resolution analysis, etc. 5

7 The overall performance of CDS is notable both for the volume of information available and for the sophistication of enquiries that are possible. The oldest of the servers, SIMBAD, has been in service for 35 years and received in 2006 its fourth "heart", a postgresql system of database management. The most recent system, ALADIN, is an excellent example of interoperability since it makes it possible to install the application on a user's machine and open windows onto other databases. This demonstrates another aspect of CDS's activity, its role in defining and spreading standards, accepted because of the technical leadership it has demonstrated on so many occasions. Users requests are above per day. CDS's recognized expertise has naturally made it one of the leading actors of the Virtual Astronomical Observatory, an international observatory that it has helped bring to the fore. The director of CDS is a member (chair mid-2006 to mid-2007) of the executive committee of the International Virtual Observatory, chair of the executive committee of the European VO; and leads the Data Center Alliance one of the three elements of the European VO. Although CDS's reputation is very high, challenges remain. It must continue to make progress against two challenging, and often conflicting, demands: - one requiring rapid, but not risky, technological change, avoiding system and software obsolescence, and minimizing recurrent maintenance costs, while maintaining performance ; - the other in managing the non-linearly growing flood of data, that constantly requires the use of more, and more technically skilled, staff. The CDS has a proven record in meeting the first challenge, thanks to the skills of its technicians, its way of anticipating problems, and its proven success in strategic choices. As for the second point, the solution found up to now has been to rely on well trained and dedicated staff, aided by tried and true technologies. These solutions no longer seem adequate to meet current survey data volumes. Given staff limits, the choice has been made to restrict provision for all Simbad data sets being provided through VizieR. This is a significant change in the lab's philosophy. The CDS makes excellent use of the expertise of its scientific teams: these provide the broad «users» point of view without which such a center could not do such excellent developments. The committee has thus concluded that this high quality and unique capability provided by the Strasbourg Observatory should be aggressively pursued, and that the high level of support given by CNRS must be continued. The Louis Pasteur University should be more aware of the international visibility brought to it by the CDS. We are aware of the need to reinforce central university services, within the framework of the policy of reinforcing the role of universities in research in France initiated 20 years ago, and amplified by the present government. This should be done by providing new resources to the under-funded French universities, and certainly not by withdrawing essential administrative and technical staff from their best laboratories. 4 Specific appreciation team by team and/or project by project High Energy Group The team numbers 8 active researchers plus one recently retired professor, 5 students and 1 postdoc. The age structure is healthy, with 3 researchers below 40 who arrived during the last 4 years. The activities revolve around observations and modelling of two broad types of X-ray sources: young stars and compact objects. The team members are each involved in strong international collaborations, have a very good publication record and have been very successful in getting observing time on the highly competitive X-ray satellites (e.g. 200 ks on XMM-Newton this year). The critical mass is clearly in-place to remain a major player in X-ray astronomy. 6

8 After one well known theorist retirement and one of the main leaders of this team was appointed head of astronomy at CNRS/INSU, the team is not as strong as it was on theory. Recruiting one more theorist around the accretion-ejection issues which are central to X-ray astronomy would be ideal. On the observational side, the committee recommends joining forces on one or two topics in which the Strasbourg Observatory would become a clear international leader, while maintaining the very productive current collaborations with other X-ray groups. XMM-Newton SSC The high energy team has been involved since 1996 in the XMM-SSC, in charge of pipeline processing of all XMM-Newton data and building a catalogue of all XMM sources. Strasbourg s role in the SSC is very clear and rather high-profile: they are responsible for cross-correlating the X-ray sources found in each observation with known sources in existing catalogues (from CDS), a quasi-real time activity with operational constraints. They have also advised the entire SSC team on databases, and have recently been asked to centralize the results of the optical follow-up organized by the SSC to identify a subset of the sources. XMM has taken data since 2000, and is guaranteed funding by ESA until 2012, so this activity will remain for the next four years at least. The committee judges very favourably this involvement, which uses optimally the expertise present locally at CDS, and has certainly helped in attracting young X-ray astronomers to Strasbourg to strengthen the team. A similar opportunity arises now, with the organization of the ground segment for the future SIMBOL-X project being discussed between France and Italy. SIMBOL-X will push high sensitivity studies to hard X-rays, a key domain for the accreting sources studied here. To secure Strasbourg s place in the project, the committee encourages them to propose a service drawing on the strengths of CDS, similar to what was done for XMM-Newton. Galaxies Group This team is the merger of two previous groups, one involved in stellar physics and the second dealing with galaxies, motivated by the retirement of two key people. Given the science interests are largely stellar spectroscopy, for kinematics and abundances, the synergy is mostly effective, but there is little real interaction between theory and observation. For the new contract, the group comprises 9 scientists with permanent positions (2 full professors, 3 assistant professors, 3 astronomers and one assistant researcher at the CNRS), and a professor emeritus. The leader of the group is a CNRS researcher with significant involvement in national and international science committees and a high impact. The scientific objective is the highly topical question of understanding the formation, composition and evolution of galaxies, with special emphasis on the Milky Way, using observations and dynamical modelling. Major results have been obtained on the galactic halo, on the existence of sub-structure in Andromeda, and in the production of fundamental data from low resolution spectroscopy in the Milky Way. The publication and citation rate are high, with more than 100 refereed papers during the four years covered by the report. The group is also involved in intensive computations with the GRAPE technology to model the dynamical interactions between a massive black hole at the centre of a galaxy and its stellar environment. While interesting, this work could be better integrated with the HORIZON project, which unites the effort in numerical simulation related to galaxy formation. Among major continuing projects we note: A collaboration with MPIA, Cambridge and Sydney are using the DEIMOS multi-object spectrograph on Keck II to conduct a spectroscopic survey of M31 and in its inner halo. This is a large program over several years, producing a detailed kinematic description of the galaxy from observed radial velocities of stars. The results already published are outstanding. Two members of the team are actively involved in RAVE (Radial Velocity Experiment), an ambitious survey program to measure the radial velocities, metallicities and abundance ratios for up to a million stars before This is an international project and the French participation has been granted support through a successful application to the ANR. This grant will allow for a post-doctoral position and the funding of the observations for the French participation. The ANR application also involves another senior member of the team and 3 PhD students in the scientific exploitation related to the Galactic halo and stellar streams. This is a structuring project within the Galaxies team bringing new collaborations between senior members and young researchers around a successful project. The timescale is well phased with the duration of the new four-year contract. 7

9 Future development plans: Gaia will dominate this science in the future. Current group involvement is through one person in the processing of the astrometric binaries (several 10 8 are expected), for which he is the PI of a dedicated task in the European Consortium. This is an important and long-term project. Future planning of CDS involvement with Gaia data will be needed. Similarly, the group should try to be more directly involved in the preparation of the science pertaining to their field that will be conducted with the future instruments of the VLT and of the ELT. 5 Appreciation of resources and of the life of the research unit En termes de management : The unit remains relatively small. Internal communication is satisfactory as is the level of discussions with relevant people before decisions are taken by the director and his team. The evolution of the local university structure (regrouping the 3 Strasbourg universities) should allow a favorable opportunity to provide more appropriate levels of the Observatory visibility, particularly for much better recognition of the international visibility the CDS gives to the university. The presently emerging structure with the observatory attached to the «Maths-Computer Science-Physics- Chemistry» grouping is well adapted to the profile of the astronomical observatory. The scientific teams (high energy astrophysics and galaxies) as well as the technical skills (data minimg algorithms, statistical methods) are much better suited to this collegium than to any alternative which is being considered. We suggest that, with the increasing responsibilities of universities in the organisation of research, the Louis Pasteur university should establish, through regular meetings with INSU, a close collaboration to ensure the continuity of the CDS operations, and ensure maintenance of its status as a provider of international services essential to world wide astronomy. En termes de ressources humaines : The committee notes with approval the dedication and high quality of the technical and administrative staff of the Strasbourg Observatory, which has led to scientific successes exemplified by the CDS role in international astronomy. The service to the community provided by the CDS requires that the funding authorities agree on a mechanism to ensure the timely replacement of departing key personnel. The CDS itself includes a very large part of the administrative and technical staff, and of the staff who are essential to operate the basic observatory infrastructure on which the CDS relies. This implies a structure with no flexibility, and which is too small to cope internally with unexpected departures. The average age is low, reflecting the strong support of CNRS, which provided 13 new positions over the last 13 years. CNRS has become the main contributor to viability, since the University is supporting the same number of positions as it did 15 years ago, with even a small decrease in the last 10 years. Discussions with the staff revealed a significant lack of an appropriate definition in the CNRS grid of the tasks of those people working in CDS on data ingestion, a situation very different from most of those in the same group who are library staff. We recommend that these new activities be properly defined and recognized. Astronomy might be ahead of other disciplines in its requirements to curate digital data, but the need does exist and is growing elsewhere. This task definition should include some means to ensure adequate continuing professional development. The age distribution in the observatory is quite unusual, being very young. Graduate students and post docs find the environment highly satistactory, which deserves credit, as does the high level of international contact, which attests to the vitality of the observatory in international collaborations. 8

10 The number of post docs is clearly too small for the size of the scientific teams. It should be at least comparable to the number of graduate students, to have an even distribution of ages during thesis and in the three years following the thesis. We strongly recommand a more aggressive attitude by the observatory to earn post doctoral positions from the various type of sources now available (European Commission, Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, CNRS, projects). En termes de communication : Observatory staff are fully involved in the Master of Astrophysics course in the University, which is part of the physics UFR. This is particularly true for the M2 Research component, where the Observatory essentially has full responsibility. The current rather small number of students will no doubt be ameliorated by the considerable efforts in building European connections which the Observatory staff have underway. Recent appointment of new teaching staff will certainly help. The Doctoral School is located inside the Earth Sciences division. Although this has worked well in the past, creation of the new College structure is a good opportunity to rationalize the subject access, and clarify the subject links between teaching and research at Masters and Doctoral levels. 6 Recommendations and advice Strong points : The Strasbourg Observatory is leading or coleading a number of excellent international research projects : in the Dynamics of Galaxies group this includes the M31 project using Keck, the RAVE project on our own galaxy, and the astrometric binaries activity in GAIA; in the high energy astrophysics the XMM-Newton-SSC project is excellent. The younger generation of leaders is very good and is delivering real scientific leadership. The CDS has very high international visibility, an excellent international reputation, and leads a number of critical developments in the international Virtual Observatory. What needs to be improved : The number of post docs is too small ; a vigorous policy is needed to change that. Recommendations : In high energy astrophysics, the observatory should develop proactive planning for involvement in the SIMBOL-X project, where they should be able to propose leadership of activities similar to what they are delivering for the XMM-Newton SSC. The teams of the galaxies group are in an excellent position to be scientific leaders in the science with GAIA. This should be prepared actively, involving CDS expertise. We recommend to the national organisations INSU and CNRS to give the CDS the national recognition it deserves, by ensuring the level and continuity of the support it needs. CDS should have the same level of national commitment as some of the major observational facilities of international standard classified as TGE. The full accounting cost of a long term service of this kind over typically 50 years is comparable to many TGE, although provided in different form. 9

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