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European |
ESO — Reaching New Heights in Astronomy
 
 
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20–21 September 2016, ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany
ESO is considering building an adaptive optics (AO) instrument to make best use of the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF) which is being commissioned during the coming years. The first AO Community Days are an opportunity to discuss the science cases of future AO instrumentation at ESO with a goal of developing the case for a future VLT instrument to become operational before 2025.
The VLT already offers a range of high angular resolution and high contrast instruments and the E-ELT will expand these capabilities even further. The VLT Adaptive Optics Community Days (20–21 September 2016) will explore the future needs of the community in an open discussion. Potential directions for development are NIR multi-conjugate AO, optical AO, extreme AO and multi-object AO. The programme will combine focussed presentations with discussion sessions to identify the science to be done in the next decade. The meeting is open to all interested; the registration deadline is 2 August 2016.
ESO will present the conclusions of the discussions to its Scientific Technical Committee (STC) for recommendation on future VLT AO instrumentation. A wide participation will ensure that we discuss all possibilities and provide the tools for the most exciting future research to our community.