ESO Search for Potential Astronomical Sites (ESPAS-2000)
Site Characterization Working Group Membership


Permanent Members

M. Beniston, Professor of Physical Geography and Head of the Institute, was on the board of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) and recently published a book on atmospheric and climate models: From Turbulence to Climate. E. Masciadri is researcher at the Max-Plank Institut fur Astronomie, Heidelberg, (Germnay) and she previously spent a few years as a researcher at the Instituto de Astronomie-UNAM, Mexico D.F. (Mexico). She presented her thesis at Nice University (France) on the adaptation of a mesoscale non hydrostatic model (MesoNH, CNRM Toulouse) to the modelisation of optical turbulence. S. Ortolani is Senior Professor at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Padova. He was chairman of the site selection committee for the Galileo Italian National Telescope and member of the ESO VLT site selection WG. He is currently member of the LBT Scientific Advisory Committee, Italian representative at the Canarias site committee (SUCOSIP) and ESA consultant at the HST User Committee. He is also responsible for Galileo meteo and seeing instrumentation at La Palma. His main field of research is stellar photometry in galactic star clusters. He is also involved in studies of climatology in collaboration with prof. Dario Camuffo (CNR, Padova, Italy). M. Quattri is the ESO engineer in charge of the VLT structures and co-chairman of the Telescope and Enclosure ELT-WG. Wind load and seismicity are site characteristics which shall have a major impact on ELT performances and cost. M. Sarazin is the ESO physicist in charge of the VLT site monitoring and co-chairman of the Site Characterization ELT-WG. A. Tokovinin is Assocoate Astronomer at CTIO in charge of SOAR adaptive optics project. He was formerly with the adaptive optics group in the Instrumentation Division at ESO. He has a long experience of site survey instrumentation, in particular for the monitoring of such parameters as the outer scale or the vertical distribution of the turbulence.

7 June 2000