ESO-Enews #9: May 2008

In this issue:

1. ESO STUDENTSHIPS

The European Southern Observatory research student programme aims at providing opportunities to enhance the Ph.D. programmes of ESO member-state universities. Its goal is to bring young scientists into close contact with the activities and people at one of the world's foremost observatories.
Students in the programme work on their doctoral project under the formal supervision of their home university. They come to either Garching or Santiago for a stay of normally between one and two years to conduct part of their studies under the co-supervision of an ESO staff astronomer. Candidates and their home institute supervisors should agree on a research project together with the ESO local supervisor.
The selection takes place on an annual basis. The deadline for this year is 15 June 2008.
More information is available at http://www.eso.org/sci/activities/ESOstudentship.html

2. MAD SCIENCE DEMONSTRATION RUN

The Multi-Conjugate Adaptive-Optics Demonstrator instrument (MAD) has undergone two successful Science Demonstration runs at Paranal with very good results and the full set of raw data collected for the different approved programmes have been already released to the astronomical community (see http://www.eso.org/sci/activities/vltsv/mad ).
Because MAD is a technology demonstrator, it was neither intended nor designed to become a regular general-user instrument on Paranal. However, the recent results with the instrument are so encouraging that the Director General of ESO has decided to make the instrument available to the community for an additional Science Demonstration run of 7 nights in August 2008 (starting on the 13th). The goal is both to timely exploit the scientific opportunities offered by this type of observations at the VLT as well as to gather useful experience for planning the scientific goals of the E-ELT, a telescope very much based on efficient AO subsystems.
The full call with detailed information can be found at http://www.eso.org/sci/activities/vltsv/
Information on MAD is available at http://www.eso.org/projects/aot/mad

3. LARGE PROGRAMMES WORKSHOP

Over the first ten years of science operations of the VLT, 15% of the science time has been devoted to the execution of Large Programmes. In May 2003, ESO organised a Large Programme workshop to obtain a first assessment of the scientific return of Large Programmes. In agreement with its Observing Programmes Committee, ESO wishes to obtain a new overview of the scientific results achieved through Large Programmes conducted at the La Silla Paranal Observatory. To this effect, ESO is organising a three-day workshop in Garching.
The workshop will feature scientific presentations of all Large Programmes that have been completed since the May 2003 workshop. The teams of investigators in charge of these Large Programmes will be invited to present their scientific results, and the impact that their project has had in its field.
The web site of the workshop is at http://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/LP2008/index.html
Please note that the attendance will be limited to about 100 participants.

4. SCIENCE WITH THE ELT WORKSHOP AT JENAM 2008

The JENAM 2008 astronomical meeting is a prime opportunity to discuss the science goals of a major potential ground-based observing facility for European Astronomy, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) project, now in the midst of its 3-year detailed design phase.
The Symposium is being organised by ESO in liaison with the Opticon-ESO E-ELT Science Working Group. The event is sponsored by the European Commission FP6 Opticon and FP7 E-ELT Prep. programmes. Prime motivations are to inform the community on the scientific perspectives opened by such a facility and, crucially, to get its feedback on the science goals and requirements needed to help make the E-ELT a powerful tool for European astronomy.
More information is available at http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/eelt/jenam08/

5. PI DIRECT ACCESS TO ESO PROPRIETARY DATA

Principal Investigators, with an activated User Portal account, can now download their proprietary raw data from the Science Archive Facility as soon as the data have been ingested into the archive. This has become possible through the secure PI authentication embedded in the User Portal log-in interface.
Raw data become available for download approximately 10 to 14 days after the observations. The one-year proprietary period begins when the corresponding archive request is successfully completed, i.e. the data are made available to the requester.
Any further questions should be addressed to the User Support Department at usd-help@eso.org .

6. PRESS RELEASES ON ESO RESULTS

Should you consider that your results are worthy of a press release please contact the ESO Public Affairs Department (information@eso.org), preferably when the paper is submitted for publication. ESO reserves the right to use data obtained with ESO telescopes as part of programmes allocated ESO time for press releases.

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