By Nadine Manset (Director of Science Operations, on behalf of the CFHT ‘ohana)
Recently
As proposed in its 10-year plan, CFHT offered up to 400 nights for Large Programs (LP) to be executed over a maximum of 1.5 years for MegaCam, and a maximum of 2 years for ESPaDOnS and SPIRou, in 2025 and 2026. NRC (Canada) and CNRS (France) offered up to 70% of their agency time for this round of Large Programs. CFHT is excited to announce that out of the 400 nights offered, 330 nights were
awarded to two MegaCam Large Programs, UNIONS+ and Pristine, and one SPIRou LP, PLANETS.
“UNIONS+: Securing the Imaging Legacy of CFHT” is led by Alan McConnachie (NRC Herzberg), S. Gwyn (CADC), and J.C. Cuillandre (CEA), and includes over 4 dozen Canadian co-I. The Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS) is the definitive large area multi-band (u, g, r, i, z) ground-based wide-field survey in the northern hemisphere. UNIONS+ will extend the current coverage and contribute a total of 43% of the Euclid ground-based coverage. UNIONS is providing answers on its own to some of the most fundamental questions in astronomy, including the properties of dark matter, the growth of structure in the Universe from the very smallest galaxies to cluster scales, and the assembly of the Milky Way.
“PLANETS: PLanets, Atmospheres, and Nativity of ExtraTerrestrial worldS” is led by Jean-François Donati (IRAP/OMP) and includes multiple co-I from Canada, including E. Artigau (Université de Montréal), N. Cowan (McGill University), and over a dozen more. Building upon the extensive results of the SLS and SPICE LPs with SPIRou, PLANETS will now focus on very-low-mass nearby M dwarfs to unveil and characterize their planetary systems, on low-mass pre-main sequence stars whose accretion processes, inner accretion discs and inner planetary systems will be investigated to improve our understanding of star / planet formation, and on a handful of exoplanet atmospheres to be repeatedly scrutinized in order to accurately quantify their physical properties.
The Pristine LP will map the metallicity of the Milky Way system. Led by Nicolas Martin (Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg) and also including many Canadian astronomers (S. Fabbro and A. McConnachie from NRC Herzberg, A. McKay, F. Sestito, and K. Venn from University of Victoria, and a few more), the team will build on their extensive expertise of CFHT, MegaCam, and its excellent, metallicity-sensitive Ca H&K filter to push the Pristine survey that studies the oldest stars in the Milky Way to a new level. The observations will deconstruct the MW in its different environments (disk, halo, satellites) to enable a direct and thorough comparison with expectations from galaxy formation and evolution models. At the same time, any additionally uncovered extremely metal-poor stars ([Fe/H] <–3.0) with this LP program will contribute significantly to the hunt for the first generation of stars.
Additional details are available on the following page: https://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/en/science/LargePrograms/LP25A/
CFHT and the W. M. Keck Observatory again had the great honor to co-sponsor the Santa Float in the Waimea Twilight Christmas Parade on December 7th. The Christmas Parade was followed by a fun
Winter Star Party during which participants were able to take a look at the Moon, Saturn, and Jupiter. Hot chocolate and cookies were waiting for those who wandered inside our headquarters to look at our Remote Observer conducting observations.
Soon
If you happen to attend the AAS meeting in January, come by our booth, engage with the special session on Community Based Astronomy, or chat with us during the dedicated CFHT Evening Splinter Session. In January, we will also open the registration for the Users’ Meeting, which will be held May 26 – 28 at Lac-à-L’Eau-Claire, Québec. Preliminary information is available:
https://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/en/news/UM2025/venue.php
Mele Kalikimaka a me Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou!