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An RAS Specialist Meeting, London, 14 October 2005: “Science from La Palma —Looking Beyond 2009”
An RAS Specialist Meeting, London, 14 October 2005: “Science
from La Palma —Looking Beyond 2009”
Danny Lennon* (ING), Chris Evans (ING/ATC) and Janet Drew (Imperial
College, London)
As discussed
in the Director’s opening message, the ING is reaching an important point
in its history. In 2009 the international agreement setting up the Roque de
los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma will have been in existence
for a period of 30 years. In 2007 the United Kingdom will have to make a decision
on whether or not to withdraw from that agreement and PPARC, through its ownership
of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, has the responsibility of deciding
on the UK’s involvement in the observatory beyond 2009. As part of the
decision making process, and in support of the UK’s overall strategic
re-evaluation in astronomy, the ING was reviewed during 2005. It was therefore
thought timely to assess recent scientific achievements from the Roque de los
Muchachos, and to consider what role the observatory might have beyond 2009.
Under the auspices of the Royal Astronomical Society a Specialist Meeting was
held in Burlington House, Piccadilly, London on October 14th 2005 and was attended
by approximately 100 astronomers from around the UK. The meeting was structured
to allow two morning sessions of science talks with contributors from various
fields in astronomy, followed in the afternoon by a series of strategy talks,
culminating in a half-hour discussion on the future of the ING.
Lecture theatre of the Geological Society at Burlington House, Piccadilly,
London. [ JPEG | TIFF
]
The morning session, chaired by Gavin Dalton (Oxford Univ.), was
opened by Danny Lennon (ING) who welcomed the participants and summarised the
motivation for the meeting. This was quickly followed by Peter Meikle (Imperial
College) with an excellent contribution on supernova studies showing how telescopes
of different aperture sizes can all contribute effectively to this field of
research. Some highlights included recent results on the search for supernovae
in the nuclei of starburst galaxies, and on the physics of type Ia supernovae.
Mike Irwin (IoA) then reviewed the achievements of the INT in the area wide
field surveys, paying particular attention to the impressive results in recent
years on such topics as satellites and tidal tails in the Local Group. Jim Hough
(Hertfordshire Univ.) emphasised how the low intrinsic telescope polarisation
of the WHT makes it the ideal platform for his visitor instrument PLANETPOL,
used in pursuit of the direct detection of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.
Tom Marsh (Warwick Univ.) brought us up to the coffee break with a review of
his work using the INT and WHT to search for double degenerates, concentrating
as well on the important contribution the WHT is making to Supernova Progenitor
Survey in following up and characterising double degenerate systems.
Don Pollacco (QUB) chaired the post-coffee session which opened
with a presentation by Mark Wilkinson (IoA) on observations of stars in Local
Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies using the ING’s AF2/WYFFOS instrument
on the WHT, showing how their kinematics are excellent probes of dark matter
properties on various scales. This was followed by two complementary contributions
by Mike Merrifield (Nottingham Univ.) and Tim de Zeeuw (Leiden Univ.) on the
visiting instruments, the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph (PNS) and the integral
field spectrograph SAURON respectively. We saw how PNS has been used to investigate
the dynamics of PNe and dark matter in the distant haloes of galaxies while
SAURON has focused on the inner regions of galaxies, with additional fine scale
in the nuclear regions being revealed with the ING’s adaptive optics assisted
integral field spectrograph OASIS. Both talks painted a very bright picture
for the future of these instruments at ING. Rob Jeffries (Keele Univ.) then
discussed results from the ING on binary systems among low mass stars and brown
dwarfs, highlighting the high fraction of short-period binary systems found
in the Sigma Orionis cluster. Vik Dhillon (Sheffield Univ.) closed the morning
session with an overview of the science produced with another visitor to the
WHT, the high-speed triple-beam CCD camera Ultracam, now being used to exploit
the time domain in astronomy.
The afternoon strategy session, chaired by Tim de Zeeuw (Leiden
Univ.), kicked off with an invited contribution from Rafael Rebolo (IAC) concerning
the status and capabilities of Grantecan, Spain’s 10m telescope on La
Palma. Rafael emphasised the complementarity of the ING telescopes with Grantecan
and Spain’s very strong interest in seeing the telescopes continue beyond
the 2009 watershed. This was followed by a review of the ING’s current
instrumentation suite and development plans by René Rutten (Director,
ING). This included an overview of the Adaptive Optics and laser guide star
project (GLAS) due for completion in 2006, and also introduced the idea of possible
joint operations of all the night-time telescopes by a common organisation,
a Common Northern Observatory (CNO), which might well be a viable path for the
future. Bruno Leibundgut (ESO, ING Visiting Committee member) then gave a summary
of the findings of the ING Visiting Committee, highlighting for example the
strategic importance of the ING as a platform for innovative instrumentation
leading campaign-style programs, its northern hemisphere location and the excellence
of the site, its lead in adaptive optics, and the potential for support of space
astronomy. Thijs van der Hulst (Groningen, Chairman of ING Board) re-iterated
much of this in his presentation of the ING Board’s view of ING beyond
2009, stating that in the Board’s opinion it is vital to continue ING
into the next decade and pointed out importance of getting a commitment from
all three parties (PPARC, NWO and IAC) to a common policy. The meeting finished
with an open discussion, chaired by Janet Drew (Imperial College), during which
there was a lively discussion of the CNO idea (Johannes Andersen, NOT Director).
Gerry Gilmore (IoA) emphasised that the future scientific direction of the telescopes
needs to be addressed as well as these organisational issues. It was also pointed
out that an important aspect of ING operations is the significant degree of
hands-on participation by young astronomers in science projects. The flexibility
of the ING to allow various visitor instruments access to the WHT was also praised
and valued. The discussion finished with a statement by Roger Davies (Oxford
Univ.) promising to bring the flavour of the meeting to the attention of PPARC’s
Science Committee. ¤