Author Archives: ecasseditor

By Nadine Manset (Director of Science Operations, on behalf of the CFHT ‘ohana)
(Cassiopeia – Summer 2024)

The Canada-France-Hawaiʻi Telescope will be 45 years old in August! Strong with experience and expertise, we are planning the upcoming 10 years to continue serving our communities. CFHT’s mission is to provide you with a versatile and state-of-the-art astronomical observing facility that is well-matched to your scientific goals and fully utilizes the potential of the Maunakea site.

As CFHT approaches the end of the current Maunakea lease, we plan to spend the remainder of this decade working in close consultation with the newly formed Maunakea Stewardship and Oversight Authority (MKSOA), our Hawaiʻi community, and our astronomy community to build a collaborative future that we hope results in the continuation and upgrade of CFHT on Maunakea past 2033.

The four pillars of CFHT’s strategy revolve around successfully operating CFHT for at least 10 more years, engaging with the local community in Hawaiʻi, raising awareness in the astronomy community of the need to change the way we practice our profession, and advancing the design work for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE), which remains our long-term objective.

Operational Component of the 10-year Plan

The operational component of the plan adopted consists of implementing Wenaokeao formerly known as VISION, the co-mount of  ESPaDOnS and SPIRou, starting in 2025, followed by the decommissioning of WIRCam and SITELLE at the end of 2026B. The optomechanical interface Wenaokeao will allow the use of SPIRou only (no intervening optics), ESPaDOnS only (using relay optics), or both SPIRou and ESPaDOnS simultaneously (using a beam splitter).

On the development side, we continue the design of the CFHT-IFU, contingent on grant approval, and advance the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer design.

On the science side, we are increasing the fraction of time dedicated to Large Programs for the 2025A – 2026B period and planning for a major scientific survey that will follow.

In early 2024, we opened a call for Large Programs (LP) to use up to 400 nights from 2025A to 2026B. Out of the 6 proposals received, the one(s) selected will be announced in the fall.

Given the remarkable success of the CFHTLS, we are considering having another major scientific survey, defined by the community (as opposed to teams centered around a single PI), to follow this upcoming round of LP. This major effort would extend over 4 or 5 years and be carried on MegaCam and/or Wenaokeao. Since this has to be community-driven, a call for ideas will be issued and we already welcome your suggestions.

To share your thoughts, feel free to send an email to manset@cfht.hawaii.edu.

By Eric Steinbring (Canadian Gemini Office, NRC Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre)
(Cassiopeia – Summer 2024)

Call for Community Recommendations on the Gemini Strategic Plan

The Gemini Strategic Plan is the roadmap for how the Observatory will enable forefront scientific capability from both hemispheres. And now it’s time to shape the long-range strategy and set priorities for well into the next decade. For example, should Gemini develop new workhorse instruments for both sites, or tend to specialized instruments at each? What are the critical capabilities that instruments should have? Are there synergies with other space- and ground-based facilities that Gemini should prioritize; and what archival and data-reduction improvements would increase your scientific return the most? How can these best support Canada’s projects on the Thirty Meter Telescope, or say, the Habitable Worlds Observatory? This is a reminder of the invitation to submit brief community recommendations here. Details of the format to those reports and instructions for submission are available there. Reports are due by 13 September 2024. Where do you see Gemini best placed in the 2030s?

By Eric Steinbring with translation by Stéphanie Côté (Canadian Gemini Office, NRC Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre)
(Cassiopeia – Spring 2024)

Upcoming Deadlines

There are three important Call for Proposal (CfP) application deadlines coming up – all back-to-back-to-back – providing Canadians competitive access to Gemini. So just to help keep these straight:

• First is the monthly CfP for Fast Turnaround (FT) time, at noon Hawai’i Standard Time (HST) on 31 March. For the FT Call see here. These are short proposals that can put a small, but important dataset in your hands quickly;
• Next, on 1 April is the deadline for full proposals to the Large and Long Program (LLP) 2024 Call. These are big proposals, asking for either significantly more time than a Regular proposal, or spread over many semesters – or both;
• And then, finally, is the 2024B semester CfP, at 4 PM (PDT) / 7 PM (EDT) on 2 April. This is for Regular semesterly proposals. Look here for the Canadian-specific information about that Call.

Good luck.

New Modes and Instruments

Something new in the North is the Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS) low-resolution Integral Field Unit (IFU); this has coverage from 1 to 2.5 microns over a 3.15″ x 4.80″ Field of View (FoV) with 0.15″ pixels. A second high-resolution IFU (using the 0.05″-pixel-sampling camera) is also now available on a shared-risk basis in the upcoming 2024B CfP. They can be used along with Altair adaptive optics, and together are meant to replace the venerable Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS) – which has been retired. Incidentally, the Near-InfraRed Imager (NIRI) is also retired, but GNIRS has got your back, allowing imaging using its direct “keyhole” FoV. And, coming soon to the North is the new Immersion GRating INfrared Spectrograph-2 (IGRINS-2), which is essentially a clone of the visiting instrument IGRINS, which will soon leave Gemini South. IGRINS-2 is an efficient, high-resolution (R~40,000; 1.49-2.46 micron) spectrograph, which will undergo a Science Verification phase in the May/June timescale. Keep on the lookout for that!

Student and Outreach Initiatives

A couple things might be of interest, especially to students anticipating making use of Gemini – or, if you’re just curious. One is the Shadow the Scientists program which provides live, interactive sessions with honest-to-goodness astronomers doing astronomy from the big telescopes, and has lately had several sessions at Gemini North (with another coming up soon, on 27 March). It’s worth noting that “eavesdropping”, i.e. remote viewing during a night, is already an option which Gemini invites for successful Regular programs. Another new idea is the Student Visitor Program, which can fund selected graduate students attached to a successful Regular-semester program to visit Gemini (North or South) and, ideally, coordinate the visit to correspond with observations for the program itself. There’s more info here. The general intent of this is for a few students each semester to meet Gemini staff, give a talk, and learn about the observatory operations onsite: the telescope, instruments and data reduction, etc. It proved very popular for the first semester offered, in 2024A.

By Erik Rosolowsky (U Alberta), Joan Wrobel (NRAO)
(Cassiopeia – Spring 2024)

ngVLA development is continuing apace with ongoing science plan and technology planning in Canada and other engaged nations including Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Taiwan. There are two upcoming conferences that could be of interest to the Canadian ngVLA community.

Follow the Monarchs: A Journey to Explore the Cosmos at (Sub)milliarcsecond Scales with the ngVLA

Conference poster for “Follow the Monarchs: A Journey to Explore the Cosmos at (Sub)milliarcsecond Scales with the ngVLA” (credit: IRyA/NRAO/AUI/NSF)

This ngVLA international science conference will be held November 11-14 in person in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Morelia, Mexico. The conference will highlight and explore the novel scientific opportunities that will unfold with the unprecedented angular resolution and sensitivity capabilities offered by this new flagship facility. The conference will coincide with the Monarch butterflies completing their migration journey from Canada and the US to the mountains surrounding Morelia. Registration and abstract submission will open on April 1.

A variety of oral presentations and posters will be featured, with a special focus on the new science that will be possible at high angular resolution. The ngVLA will allow, for the first time, the detection of thermal emission at 1 mas angular scales, as well as unprecedented high fidelity imaging of non-thermal emission on scales less than 1 mas. Researchers within and beyond radio astronomy expertise are invited to engage in discussions, share insights, and start to plan the groundbreaking science that the ngVLA will make possible. We particularly encourage the participation of early career scientists, who will be the major users of this observatory.

A Coherent View of Atomic and Molecular Gas from Infrared to Radio Wavelengths

This IAU Focus Meeting 2 will be held August 6-7 in person in Cape Town, South Africa. The meeting will explore how the work taking place at existing facilities is shaping our understanding of the interstellar medium structure and feedback in our own Milky Way and external galaxies, and how this work is re-framing the science that will be addressed by the remarkable capabilities of future radio observatories. Contributed speakers will be announced on April 8.

By Brenda Matthews and Gerald Schieven (ALMA)
(Cassiopeia – Spring 2024)

Cycle 10 Resumes

Cycle 10 observing resumed on schedule after the February shutdown. Band 1 PI observations started last week (with ~40 antennas). ALMA is currently in Configuration 1 and will change to Configuration 2 on 25 March 2024. ALMA will remain in Configuration 2 until 19 April.

Cycle 11 Call for Proposals

On 21 March, the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) will issue the call for proposals for Cycle 11, which will run October 2024 through September 2025.  The proposal deadline is expected to be 25 April 2024 at 15h UT.

Some of the new capabilities being offered in Cycle 11 include:

• Band 1 (35 GHz to 50 GHz) full polarization on all antennas of the 12-m Array with the same capability and accuracy as Bands 3-7
• Band 1 Stokes I on the 7-m Array
• Full range of configurations (C-1 through C-10) in all bands (Bands 1, 3-10) on the 12-m Array
• For a full list of capabilities, refer to the ALMA Proposer’s Guide on the documents and tools page

For complete information on the call for proposals, see the documents and tools page.

Cycle 11 ALMA Ambassadors

The selected Cycle 11 ALMA Ambassadors include two Canadians: Jess Speedie of the University of Victoria and Hamid Hassani of the University of Alberta.  Both will be hosting workshops on data reduction in fall 2024 at their home institutions. Jess Speedie intends to host a hybrid workshop to enable participation beyond local participants. Watch this space for more information on these workshops in the next eCass.

The ALMA Ambassador Program provides training and an up to $10,000 research grant to postdoctoral researchers, senior graduate students, and early career researchers interested in expanding their ALMA/interferometry expertise and sharing that knowledge with their home institutions.  The selected Ambassadors receive training at the NRAO headquarters in Charlottesville, VA on topics including interferometry basics, ALMA science capabilities, proposal writing, and guidance on speaking on these topics.  For more information and to apply for the program, see here.

ALMA Primer Video Series

The ALMA Primer Instructional Video series, which can be found on the Science Portal here, is designed to provide a basic introduction to radio interferometry, calibration, imaging, and other topics in short (5-10 minute), easy-to-digest segments.  As a work in progress, new videos are released periodically.  A new video, an Introduction to Self-Calibration, was recently released.  In this ~8 minute video, we look at Self-Calibration, how it works, and how and when to use this powerful technique that can significantly improve the dynamic range of your images.  A new video on Sidebands, Basebands and Spectral Windows will be released soon.

Other videos in the series include an Introduction to Radio Interferometry, Calibration, CLEAN, and much more.  Subscribe to the ALMA Primer Video Series youTube channel to be alerted to new videos as they are released.

We are always looking for ideas for new videos, and especially looking for people who would like to help with script generation, animation, and narration.  If you have an idea or would like to join the Primer Video Working Group (at any level of effort), please contact gerald.schieven@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

By John Hutchings, Patrick Côté (NRC Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre)
(Cassiopeia – Spring 2024)

CASTOR continues to progress towards approval and flight contracts. An extended (three-year) industrial technical (STDP) contract will wrap up this month, with the final review meeting scheduled on March 21. The work packages are being defined in detail for Phase A, with a subset prioritized in the event flight approval is delayed.

While delayed due to personnel and supply issues, the detector testing to be done at the University of Calgary vacuum facility is planned in detail. In discussions with JPL and Teledyne-e2v, the performance specifications and expectations for the flight arrays are being defined. Significant resources are being devoted by HAA to support this effort.

Our international partners also await funding, to be triggered by a formal approval in Canada, and subsequent agreements. Informal interchange of details continues as official export licences allow. The UK Space agency has approved their initial CASTOR funding to begin this spring. The Coalition for Astronomy has continued a program of meetings and mailings to alert government MPs, the PMO and related ministries to the CASTOR opportunity and international interest. They have also instigated significant media coverage. CASTOR will be represented in several upcoming conferences, including the CASCA AGM in Toronto where a Town Hall meeting is planned.

The recent MIDEX selection of UVEX by NASA offers further, anticipated, opportunity for collaboration and follow-up, similar to the CASTOR surveys coordinated with Roman, Euclid, and Rubin. The delayed launch date of 2030 for UVEX is also compatible with the CASTOR flight schedule.

For more information on the mission, see here.