La Silla Paranal Users Workshop
Getting science done with your observatory
ESO Garching, March 12-14, 2018
Rationale:
ESO's ground based observatories located in Chile serve a very diverse astronomical community. The La Silla Paranal observatory offers observations with a variety of telescopes, instruments and observing modes, including both Visitor Mode and Service Mode observations. Furthermore, the observatory provides support to its users, follows closely the quality of all observations and status of its instruments, archives the data, and for many instruments delivers science grade pipelines and reduced data products. This level of support relies on a complex machinery that although efficient it may be daunting for our user community. In a spirit of transparency and availability, ESO is hereby reaching towards its users to present the various tools and services available, and at the same time, provide help in improving the technical side of their proposals and in reducing the data obtained with instruments in La Silla and Paranal.
Thus, ESO is organising a 2.5-day event, the La Silla Paranal Users Workshop, where the first part will provide an overview of the available instruments for their science, as well as the processes at work at ESO, from proposal submission to data reduction, through collection of astronomical observations as well as use of the Science Archive.
One full day of this event will provide the chance for users to have hands-on experience on topics of their choices, including, but not restricted to, help with data reduction (both for your own data and tutorials on selected instruments), help in proposal writing, finding information on the ESO web, installing ESO software, help in observation preparation, and using the Science Archive either to access data or return reduced data to the archive. For this, participants are requested at registration to indicate area of the programme (proposal preparation, observing strategies and tools usage, data reduction) they would like to further explore. Participants will then be split in groups, according to interest, or be provided with one-to-one sessions on a best-effort basis.
If you are a La Silla Paranal Observatory user and are interested in a face-to-face contact with the various support services at ESO, this workshop is for you. This workshop will provide you with all the necessary knowledge to make the most out of ESO data and thereby provide a strong momentum to your science.
Topics:
- Which instrument for which science?
- From idea to data: How to write a good ESO proposal?
- How likely am I to have my observations done?
- Getting the most out of my time: How do I do Phase 2?
- Getting the most out of my data: How do I reduce my data?
- What data can I use from the archive to implement my scientific idea or complement my own data?
We plan to start the workshop on Monday lunchtime and to finish on Wednesday afternoon.
The final programme and the format of the workshop will depend on your input. Hence do get in touch with us!
Contact:
