Garching, January 23-26, 2007

Latest News Feb 06, 2007: Cal07 Posters available Jan 31, 2007: Cal07 Photo Gallery available Jan 28, 2007: Online Feedback Form available Jan 28, 2007: Workshop Photo available Jan 26, 2007: Presentations available Online Jan 16, 2007: Abstract Booklet available Jan 16, 2007: Updated Final Programme available Jan 16, 2007: Updated Participant List available

Summary The ESO La Silla Paranal Observatory (LPO) is currently operating 19 optical, NIR, and MIR instruments (9 VLT, 2 VLTI, 8 La Silla). To monitor and calibrate both the performance of each of these instruments and the quality of the data they deliver, ESO executes dedicated calibration plans. These systematic and regular measurements further aid in the calibration of data from science programs, at least to specified levels of accuracy. The first ESO/ST-ECF workshop on Calibrating and understanding HST and ESO instruments was held in 1995 to review the calibration strategies of HST and ESO La Silla instruments and to prepare for the start of operation of the VLT. Now in 2006, after seven years of science operation with the innovative, complex, and still growing instrumentation suite at the VLT, it is timely to review the achievements and limitations of the established instrument calibration plans together with the ESO user community. Therefore, we invite you to join us at the first ESO Instrument Calibration Workshop to be held from 23 - 26 January 2007 at the ESO headquarters in Garching, Germany.

The goals of this workshop are

• to foster the sharing of information, experience and techniques between observers, instrument developers, and instrument operation teams,
• to review the actual precisions and limitations of the applied instrument calibration plans,
• to collect the actual and future needs by the ESO users.

Workshop topics are

• the calibration and data reduction of
  • Optical Spectro-Imagers
  • Optical Multi-object Spectrographs
  • NIR and MIR Spectro-Imagers
  • High-Resolution Spectrographs
  • Integral Field Spectrographs
  • Adaptive Optics Instruments
  • Polarimetric Instruments
  • Wide-field Imagers
  • Interferometric Instruments
• Pipelines, Quality Control, Science Archive, AVO
• Data-Reduction Systems, Software and Techniques

The workshop will be focussed on ESO instrumentation. A limited time of the workshop will be dedicated to new instruments on the horizon of the LPO, i.e., the VST, VISTA, and the VLT 2nd generation instruments. Future challenges as arising with ELT instrumentation are of interest for the workshop but their presentation will be limited to invited talks.

We expect that this workshop will lead to improved calibration plans to the benefit of the entire ESO user community as well as the ESO Science Archive.

Announcements

• Second Announcement (October 30, 2006)
• First Announcement (May 06, 2006)

Preliminary Agenda and Invited Speakers

The workshop agenda provides a preliminary program with the invited speakers and invited talks.

Important Dates

• Early Registration deadline: October 9, 2006
• Final Registration deadline: November 12, 2006
• Abstract Submission deadline: December 4, 2006
• Hotel Booking deadline: December 15, 2006
• Workshop: January 23-26, 2007
• Proceedings Contributions submission deadline: April 1, 2007

Registration

If you are interested to participate in the calibration workshop, please register online.
The conference fee is 100 EUR and includes one copy of the workshop proceedings, the welcome reception, the workshop dinner, and the bus transfers from and to the Garching hotels.

Organizing Committee

• Reinhard Hanuschik
• Andreas Kaufer (chair)
• Florian Kerber (co-chair)
• Nando Patat
• Michele Peron
• Martino Romaniello
• Michael Sterzik
• Christina Stoffer
• Lowell Tacconi-Garman